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THE GOSPEL 

ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



BY 



GEORGE GRIFFIN, LL.D. 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by 
D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 
In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York. 



PREFACE. 



It may be justly inferred from the title-page to 
this volume, that it treats mainly of the internal 
evidences of Christianity. For should the Gospel 
assume the form of a living, speaking man, and, 
like Paul before Agrippa, plead, with outstretched 
hand, its cause before the countless myriads of 
human kind, it would doubtless place its chief reli- 
ance on its own Sacred Pages. Nevertheless, the 
author will not deem himself precluded by the title- 
page from sometimes overstepping the line generally 
regarded as the boundary between the intrinsic and 
external departments of the evangelical proofs. 
Those departments are not hostile or foreign territo- 
ries, in their mutual relations ; and an essay on the 
one may occasionally invoke aid from the other, 
without essentially violating the laws of its unity. 



iv 



PREFACE. 



Nor does the author mean to profess by the title- 
page, that he is about to condense within his nar- 
row bounds all the inherent demonstrations of the 
divinity of the New Testament. Those demonstra- 
tions are exceedingly numerous ; they multiply 
under every fresh perusal of the Holy Volume ; and 
he can only select from the inexhaustible storehouse 
such views as have most forcibly impressed them- 
selves on his own meditations. 

The scriptural prophecies, and their stupendous 
fulfilments, are usually classed in the external de- 
partment of the christian proofs. Yet the author, 
irrespective of mere geographical distinctions, would 
gladly have attempted their discussion, had his 
limits allowed it. The argument from prophecy is 
one of the most powerful weapons in the armory of 
sacred truth. The christian fathers thought it even 
more conclusive than that founded on miracles; 
and it is stronger now than it was when the fathers 
wrote. It has gathered new confirmation from the 
lapse of centuries. But it requires a minute expo- 
sition of all the predictions of the Old Testament, 
as well as of the New, and a close historical survey 



PREFACE. 



V 



of their wonderful accomplishments, perfected and 
progressive. The subject would supply ample ma- 
terials for an independent work of no inconsidera- 
ble length. Had the author attempted to abridge 
it within his brief essay, he would, by mutilating, 
have rendered powerless, so far as in him lay, the 
mighty argument founded on prophecy fulfilled. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I 

JESUS CHRIST WAS A REAL PERSONAGE — AND THE GOSPEL WAS 
PUBLISHED AT THE TIME IT PURPORTS TO HAVE BEEN. 

PAGE 

Heathen testimonies — Passage from Tacitus — Its gen- 
uineness admitted by the infidel Gibbon — Character of 
Tacitus as an historian — Suetonius — Pliny — His let- 
ter to Trajan — Trajan's reply — Their genuineness ad- 
mitted by Gibbon — Pontius Pilate — Usage of republi- 
can and imperial Rome for procurators of provinces to 
transmit to central government accounts of extraor- 
dinary events within their jurisdiction — Early christian 
fathers constantly stated that Pilate had communicated 
to Tiberius an account of Christ's trial, death, and 
alleged resurrection, with the accompanying prodigies 
— No heathen writer ever denied existence of docu- 
ment — Yet pagan Rome suppressed it — Inference inev- 
itable that she suppressed the document because it 
would have proved the prodigies accompanying the 
crucifixion^ and the consequent divinity of Jesus Christ, 15 

CHAPTER H 

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 

Further heathen testimonies — Celsus wrote against 
Christianity about one century after promulgation of 
Gospel — Extracts from his works — Admits that Jesus 
Christ was a real Personage — And that Gospel was 
written by his primitive disciples — Admits generally 
the Gospel history — Virtually admits its miracles — 



Vlll 



CONTENTS. 



Doctor Doddridge's estimate of the extracts from Cel- 
sus — Porphyry wrote against Christianity about the 
year two hundred and seventy — Speaks of Jesus Christ 
as a real Personage — and of Gospel as written by his 
primitive disciples — Some extracts from his works — 
Emperor Julian wrote against Christianity about the 
year three hundred and sixty — Admits reality of Jesus 
Christ and antiquity of Gospel — Extracts from his 
works — Jewish testimonies — Josephus — The Mishna 
—The Talmuds, 40 



CHAPTER III. 

DIVINE REVELATION WAS COEVAL WITH THE CREATION OF MAN. 

Any supernatural communication from God a divine reve- 
lation — No matter what its form or subject — Human 
race not from everlasting — Man created without instinct 
of brutes, or innate ideas to guide him — Our primeval 
ancestors at their creation were but grown-up infants 
— Utterly inexperienced, they would have perished from 
hunger, thirst, cold, or casualties, without supernatural 
instruction — Such instruction a divine revelation — Gen- 
eral expectation of heathen world before birth of Christ 
that moral light was about to dawn, . . . .68 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 

Works of God and of man distinguishable by inspection 
— Whether God or man made Gospel is determinable 
by its internal evidence — Moral attributes of God not 
discoverable by reason — Yet reason perceives divine 
truthfulness of their delineation in Gospel — Style of 
Bible — Atonement beyond mortal contrivance — Yet 
when revealed, reason must recognize it the work of God 
— The Trinity — A mystery too profound and startling 
for impostors to have incorporated into work of fiction, 83 



CONTENTS. 



ix 



CHAPTER V. 

THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 

Gospel system of ethics like solar system in fewness 
and simplicity of its principles — Consists in love to 
God and love to man — Regulates thoughts and intents 
of heart — Disclaims heroic virtues — Places humility in 
front rank of its graces — Has chivalry of its own — Paul 
and Julius Caesar contrasted — Other evangelical graces 
— Forgiveness of injuries — Universal beneficence — 
Victory over world — Sanctions of Gospel, . . . 105 

CHAPTER VI. 

. THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 

Difficulty of delineating character — Especially that of per- 
fect man — Delineation of perfect man reserved for fisher- 
men of Galilee — They had no human model — Difficulty 
enhanced by the fact that the Christ of the Gospel en- 
shrined the second person of the Trinity — Infidelity 
gains nothing by supposing that Christ was the de- 
ceiver and his biographers the dupes — Enacting perfect 
character more difficult than even delineation of one — 
His blended meekness, lowliness and majesty — His 
humiliation surpassed what mere man would have vol- 
untarily endured or conceived — His piety — His benig- 
nity — His beneficence — Cases of Bartimeus — the sin- 
ful woman who anointed his feet — the prodigal son 
— his restoring Lazarus to life — his weeping over Jeru- 
salem, 128 

CHAPTER VIL 

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 

Wisdom of Jesus Christ — His sermon on the mount — 
Other cases of his unearthly wisdom — He was the pa- 
1* 



X 



CONTENTS. 



tron and personification of holy friendship — His parting 
interview with his disciples — His simplicity — His man- 
ner of teaching — His indifference to human fame — Si- 
lence of Gospel concerning his personal appearance, . 143 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 

Trial of Jesus Christ — His grandeur and humility — Inci- 
dents of his trial — Conduct of Judas — No other traitor 
ever induced by compunctious visitings to commit sui- 
cide — His remorse and self-murder were dying confes- 
sions of the innocency and godhead of his Master — Fall 
and penitence of Peter — Conduct of Pontius Pilate — 
The crucifixion of Jesus Christ — He spoke seven times 
from the cross — And as man never spoke — Bad men 
could not have forged the character of Jesus Christ if 
they would — And good men would not have forged 
it if they could — Extract from Rousseau, . . .157 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE MIRACLES OF THE GOSPEL. 

Miracles of Christianity internal proofs of divinity — 
Science of juridical evidence applied to christian his- 
tory — Writers of Gospel not deceived — Miracles pal- 
pable to senses — abiding in effects — infallible — no col- 
lusion — open and public — continued for years in pres- 
ence of friends and foes — Writers of Gospel had good 
sense and sound understanding— Deposed from per- 
sonal knowledge — Paul knew with certainty whether 
miracles of his conversion and those wrought by him- 
self were real — Writers of Gospel eight in number — 
Testimonies equivalent to judicial depositions, . .177 



CONTENTS. 



XI 



CHAPTER X. 

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 

PAGE 

Writers of Gospel not deceivers — Truth has a manner of 
its own — Directness, simplicity, and ingenuousness of 
evangelical witnesses — Examples of their candor — 
Pureness of their moral character — Proved by their 
writings — by history — by the confessions of infidels — 
Had not primitive christians been of pure character, 
new faith would not have outlived its Founder — Writ- 
ers of Gospel consistent in narratives, doctrines, and 
precepts, without studied uniformity, .... 200 

CHAPTER XI 

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 

Writers of Gospel had no motive to deceive — Not moved 
by revenge— or prejudice — or hope of temporal emolu- 
ment — or desire to gain fame by tales of wonder — In- 
curred by their testimony certain obloquy, privations 
and sufferings, and probable torture and martyrdom — 
Conditions of discipleship foretold from beginning — 
Martyrdom, though not always proving orthodoxy, 
proves sincerity of victims, 215 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 

Auxiliary and supplemental witnesses to christian mira- 
cles — Gospel made miracles test of its divinity — Age 
of miracles continued about seventy years — During mi- 
raculous age all christians had sure means of ascertain- 
ing genuineness of miracles — Bore testimony to their 
genuineness by perilous adhesion to persecuted faith — 
Miracles the evidences of title to the promised inheri- 
tance above — Seekers after truth of Gospel would scru- 
tinize closely these evidences before giving up all to 
purchase inheritance — Witnesses to miracles thus mul- 



Xll 



CONTENTS. 



tiplied to many thousands — Each witness testified by 
his act as strongly as he could by his pen or oath — Ar- 
gument of Leslie drawn from institutions of Baptism, 
Lord's Supper, and christian Sabbath — New Testament 
and Old parts of same system — If Gospel forged, so 
were Jewish Scriptures, 229 



CHAPTER XIII. 
hume's objection to miracles. 
Miniature of Hume's theory — Vagueness in his use of 
term experience — General uniformity of nature's laws 
proved by human testimony — So may any exceptions 
to that uniformity — On Hume's theory miracles not to 
be believed on evidence of our own senses — Evidence 
of senses not more infallible than well-sustained testi- 
mony of our fellow-men — Man lives in world of mira- 
cles, and is himself a miracle — No objection to miracles 
that they are designed to authenticate a system of re- 
ligion — Such miracles imbued with intrinsic probability 
— No impostor ever founded new system of faith on 
miracles, 244 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE MIRACLE OF THE NEW BIRTH. 

Regeneration wrought by special power of Holy Ghost 
against laws of our fallen nature — It is a miracle en- 
dorsing and authenticating Gospel — Each true believer 
" hath the witness in himself" that he has been born 
again, and that Gospel is true — Miracle of new birth 
evidence to all the world of Gospel's truth — Each par- 
ticipant of eucharist makes solemn affirmation by the 
act of participation that, according to his best belief, he 
has been born again — Such affirmation equivalent to 
deposition in court — These depositions amount to 
many hundreds of millions — Deponents all deceivers, 
or deceived; or else new birth a reality, and Gospel 
from God — New birth standing miracle, . . . 259 



CONTENTS. 



xiii 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE MORAL INCONGRUITIES OF MAN. 

PAGE 

Man in his moral being destitute of harmony of organiza- 
tion belonging to other creations of God — Is compound 
of meanness and majesty — at once brutal and godlike 
— Elements of his contrarious nature in collision with 
each other — Philosophy could not explain the enigma 
— Bible explains it — Man made upright and pure — but 
sinned and fell — Thoughts on the apostasy — The fall 
the only solution of mysteries of our being — Sin un- 
natural evil — Usurper of human heart — Man an enemy 
to God — hence he takes his name in vain — and wor- 
ships idols — Man not originally made a God-hater by 
God himself — Conscience and sin not twin brothers of 
same birth — Gospel's solution of mysteries of our being 
proof of its divinity — Cause suggested of God's delay 
in final punishment of sin, 280 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 

Early and rapid spread of Gospel proved by Gospel itself, 
and by secular and ecclesiastical histories — Formidable 
impediments to its progress — Was exclusive and un- 
compromising — Opposed to prejudices and expectations 
of Jews — Country of its origin awakened prejudices of 
gentiles — Heathen superstition deeply entrenched in 
minds of nations — Retainers of polytheism roused them- 
selves to oppose invasion of Christianity — Recoiling 
from open argument, they employed foulest slanders 
— Polytheism closely interwoven with civil government 
— which was invoked and came to her rescue — Roman 
empire embraced whole civilized world — Sufferings in 
Nero's gardens specimens of other sufferings — General 
population joined in persecuting christians — Intrinsic 
impediments Gospel had to encounter — Opposed to 



XIV 



CONTENTS. 



pride, passions, and propensities of fallen man — Gospel 
made the moral reformation of its votaries a test of its 
truth — and that in an age of universal corruption — 
Human instrumentality employed in spread of Gospel 
inadequate to exigency — Its promulgators a few Jew- 
ish peasants — the most despised members of a despised 
nation — Contrast between martial conquests and the 
conquests achieved by Gospel, 297 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 

Character of Gibbon as an historian — Would have discov- 
ered any defect in foundations of Christianity — Bound 
to give some cause of prodigious spread of Gospel — 
Denying divine agency, he assigned five causes merely 
human — His five causes stated — First cause — Zeal of 
primitive christians — Was met by counter zeal of Jews 
and heathen — Second cause — Doctrine of future life — - 
Hell revealed by Gospel appalling and repulsive — Even 
its heaven not suited to tastes of depraved heart — Third 
cause — Miraculous powers ascribed to primitive church 
— Arrogation of such powers, without their possession, 
a fraud easily detected — Fourth cause — Pure morals of 
early christians — Their pure morals proof of efficacy 
and truth of Gospel — Gibbon's attempt to explain their 
pure morals — Fifth cause — Union and discipline of 
christian republic — No federative union of churches 
until close of second century — And before then Gospel 
had achieved signal triumphs — No event in history 
parallel to primitive spread of Christianity — Imposture 
of Mohammed — Modern missions, .... 324 



THE 



GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



CHAPTER I. 

JESUS CHRIST WAS A REAL PERSONAGE AND THE GOSPEL WAS PUB- 
LISHED AT THE TIME IT PURPORTS TO HAVE BEEN. 

Heathen testimonies — Passage from Tacitus — Its genuineness ad- 
mitted by the infidel Gibbon — Character of Tacitus as an histo- 
rian — Suetonius — Pliny — His letter to Trajan — Trajan's reply — 
Their genuineness admitted by Gibbon — Pontius Pilate — Usage 
of republican and imperial Rome for procurators of provinces 
to transmit to central government accounts of extraordinary 
events within their jurisdiction — Early Christian fathers con- 
stantly stated that Pilate had communicated to Tiberius an ac- 
count of Christ's trial, death, and alleged resurrection, with the 
accompanying prodigies — No heathen writer ever denied exist- 
ence of document — Yet pagan Rome suppressed it — Inference 
inevitable that she suppressed the document because it would 
have proved the prodigies accompanying the crucifixion and the 
consequent divinity of Jesus Christ. 

Had the New Testament been found amidst the 
ruins of Pompeii, or on some desert island unmarked 
by human footsteps, the finder, though ignorant of 
its previous history, must have inferred its inspira- 
tion from the originality, holiness and grandeur of 



16 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

its contents. Yet would he have been aided in his 
exploration of the Sacred Pages by proof, derived 
from some independent and sure source, that Jesus 
Christ was not a fictitious personage, and that the 
newly discovered volume, detailing his birth, life, 
death, resurrection and doctrines, had been com- 
posed by his faithful contemporaries. We have, 
therefore, deemed it a fitting introduction to our 
remarks upon the internal evidences of Christianity, 
to show, from the direct confessions or speaking si- 
lence of the ancient pagan and Jewish enemies of 
our faith, that its reputed founder actually lived 
and taught ; that he suffered martyrdom under 
Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius Caesar ; and 
that the various books forming the Gospel were 
written and promulgated by his primitive disciples. 
To this preliminary object we shall devote the 
present chapter and that immediately ensuing. 

The great fire at Rome occurred in the tenth 
year of Nero's reign, about thirty years after the 
crucifixion ; and the tyrant was more than suspected 
of being himself the incendiary. Forty years after 
the fire, Tacitus, long domiciled in the imperial 
capital, wrote, under the form of annals, his history 
of the four immediate successors of Augustus. 
Speaking of the conflagration, and of the efforts of 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



17 



Nero to divert suspicion from himself by substitu- 
ting in his place some feigned criminals, Tacitus 
says : 

" With this view he inflicted the most exquisite torments 
on those men, who, under the vulgar appellation of chris- 
tians, were already branded with deserved infamy. They 
derived their name and origin from Christ, who, in the 
reign of Tiberius, had suffered death by the sentence of the 
procurator, Pontius Pilate. For a while this dire super- 
stition was checked, but it again burst forth, and not only 
spread itself over Judea, the first seat of this mischievous 
sect, but was even introduced into Rome, the common 
asylum which receives and protects whatever is impure, 
whatever is atrocious. The confessions of those who were 
seized discovered a vast multitude of their accomplices ; 
and they were all convicted, not so much for the crime of 
setting fire to the city, as for their hatred of human kind. 
They died in torments, and then* torments were embittered 
by insult and derision. Some were nailed on crosses ; 
others sewn up in the skins of wild beasts, and exposed to 
the fury of dogs ; others again, smeared over with com- 
bustible materials, were used as torches to illuminate the 
darkness of the night. The gardens of Nero' were destined 
for the melancholy spectacle, which was accompanied with 
a horse race, and honored with the presence of the emperor, 
who mingled with the populace in the dress and attitude 
of a charioteer. The guilt of the christians deserved, in- 
deed, the most exemplary punishment ; but the public ab- 
horrence was changed into commiseration from the opinion 



18 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

that those unhappy wretches were sacrificed, not so much 
to the public welfare, as to the cruelty of a jealous tyrant." 

We have, with a single verbal correction, adopted 
Gibbon's translation of this memorable passage. 
The persecution under Nero and the genuine- 
ness of the passage from Tacitus are admitted by 
the infidel historian of the " Decline and Fall of 
the Roman Empire," who says : 

" The most skeptical criticism is obliged to respect the 
truth of this extraordinary fact, and the integrity of this 
celebrated passage of Tacitus. The former is confirmed by 
the diligent and accurate Suetonius, who mentions the 
punishment which Nero inflicted on the christians, a sect 
of men who had embraced a new and criminal superstition. 
The latter may be proved by the consent of the most an- 
cient manuscripts ; by the inimitable character of the style 
of Tacitus ; by his reputation, which guarded his text from 
the interpolations of pious fraud ; and by the purport of 
his narration, which accused the first christians of the most 
atrocious crimes, without insinuating that they possessed 
any miraculous or even magical powers above the rest of 
mankind."* 

To appreciate the value of this authenticating 



* Gibbon's Rome, Vol. II. p. 399. 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



19 



testimonial, we must bear in mind, not only the 
profound acquaintance of Gibbon with the events 
and writings of the Augustan age and his conse- 
quent capacity to detect any interpolation in the 
Roman classics, but also his virulent hostility to the 
faith of the cross, to which the world is, perhaps, 
indebted for his immortal work, and which would 
have impelled him to expose to detestation and con- 
tempt any imposture favoring the new religion, and 
to cast its obloquy on the christian name. Nothing 
but the affectation of historic impartiality could have 
wrung from him his concession of the genuineness 
of a passage so adverse to the hopes of infidelity, so 
confirmatory of the facts of the Gospel. 

The classic Tacitus was a stranger to the treas- 
ures of evangelical truth. It is not likely that he 
ever had in his hands a copy of any part of the 
Gospel. Had he known its pure ethics and sub- 
lime theism, he would not have termed it a " dire 
superstition nor would he have condemned the 
primitive christians " for their hatred of human 
kind/' Even Gibbon, in an ostentatious ebullition 
of assumed candor, declares : 

" If we seriously consider the purity of the christian re- 
ligion, the sanctity of its moral precepts, and the innocent 



20 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

as well as the austere lives of the greater number of those 
who, during the first ages, embraced the faith of the gos- 
pel, we should naturally suppose that so benevolent a doc- 
trine would have been received with due reverence even by 
the unbelieving world ; that the learned and polite, how- 
ever they might deride the miracles, would have esteemed 
the virtues of the new sect ; and that the magistrates, in- 
stead of persecuting would have protected an order of men 
who yielded the most passive obedience to the laws, though 
they declined the active care of war and government."* 

But Tacitus, though he had not studied the Gos- 
pel, had profoundly studied the annals of his country. 
Nothing in its history was beyond his grasp or be- 
neath his notice. He narrated facts with a pre- 
cision and accuracy never surpassed by a secular 
historian. His success in literature was equalled 
by his acquirements in the science of human nature. 
He was familiar alike with the court and with the 
closet. Born only about twenty years after the 
crucifixion, he was almost contemporary with Jesus 
of Nazareth. Upon his boyish imagination had 
been impressed the tragedy in the gardens of Nero ; 
his manly eye had watched the phenomenon of the 
Gospel's progress ; the very name of the new sect 



* Gibbon's Rome, Vol. II. p. 374. 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



21 



pointed to their Founder ; no peradventure can rest 
upon the facts stated in the extract from Tacitus. 
That memorable passage is plenary proof that Jesus 
Christ really lived and taught and suffered martyr- 
dom under the sentence of Pontius Pilate in the 
reign of Tiberius ; and that he was the Author of 
Christianity, which survived his crucifixion, and, 
having overspread Judea, had, anterior to the great 
conflagration, made its entrance into the imperial 
city. 

" The diligent and accurate Suetonius," as Gib- 
bon correctly describes him, speaks thus of the 
primitive faithful in narrating the events of Nero's 
reign ; " The christians, a set of men of a new and 
mischievous superstition, were punished." 

During the years one hundred and six and one 
hundred and seven of the christian era, Pliny was 
intrusted by the emperor Trajan with the govern- 
ment of Bithynia and Pontus, distant provinces 
upon the Euxine. He found the provinces, not- 
withstanding their remoteness from Judea, filled 
with christians, and in one of those years wrote to 
his imperial master for instructions how he was to 
proceed with them. The letter of Pliny and the 
answer of Trajan, now extant, are unquestionably 
genuine. Even Gibbon admits their authenticity ; 



22 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

and thence argues in favor of the lenity of the Ro- 
man government towards the christian sect.* The 
letter and answer are familiar to every scholar, but 
they cannot be too often in print ; and as we may 
have occasion to refer to them in various parts of 
our argument, we here present them entire in the 
nervous translation of Milner : 

PLINY TO TRAJAN. 

" Health. It is my usual custom, Sir, to refer all things 
of which I harbor any doubts to you. For who can better 
direct my judgment in its hesitation, or instruct my under- 
standing in its ignorance ? I never had the fortune to be 
present at any examination of christians before I came into 
this province. I am, therefore, at a loss to determine what 
is the usual object of inquiry or of punishment, and to 
what length either of them is to be carried. It has also 
been with me a question very problematical, whether any 
distinction should be made between the young and the old, 
the tender and the robust ; whether any room should be 
given for repentance, or whether the guilt of Christianity, 
once incurred, is incapable of being expiated by the most 
unequivocal retraction ; whether the name itself, abstracted 
from any flagitiousness of conduct, or the crimes connected 
with the name, be the object of punishment. In the mean 
time this has been my method with respect to those who 
were brought before me as christians. I asked them 



* Gibbon's Rome, Vol. II p. 409, 410. 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



23 



whether they were christians; if they pleaded guilty, I 
interrogated them twice afresh, with a menace of capital 
punishment. In case of obstinate perseverance, I ordered 
them to be executed. For of this I had no doubt, what- 
ever was the nature of their religion, that a sullen and ob- 
stinate inflexibility called for the vengeance of the magis- 
trate. Some were infected with the same madness, whom 
on account of then* privilege of citizenship, I reserved to be 
sent to Rome to be referred to your tribunal. In the 
course of this business, informations pouring in as is usual 
when they are encouraged, more cases occurred. An 
anonymous libel was exhibited with a catalogue of names 
of persons who yet declared that they were not christians 
then or ever had been ; and they repeated after me an in- 
vocation of the gods and of your image, which for this pur- 
pose I had ordered to be brought with the images of the 
deities. They performed sacred rites with wine and frank- 
incense and execrated Christ, none of which things I am 
told, a real christian can ever be compelled to do. On 
this account I dismissed them. Others, named by an in- 
former, first affirmed and then denied the charge of Christ- 
ianity, declaring that they had been christians but had 
ceased to be so, some three years ago, others still longer, 
some even twenty years ago. All of them worshipped 
your image, and the statues of the gods, and also execrated 
Christ, and this was the account which they gave of the 
nature of the religion they once had professed, whether it de- 
serves the name of crime or error ; namely, that they were 
accustomed on a stated day to meet before daylight, and to 
repeat among themselves a hymn to Christ as to a god, 



24 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



and to bind themselves by an oath with an obligation of 
not committing any wickedness, but on the contrary, of ab- 
staining from thefts, robberies and adulteries ; also of not 
violating their promise, or denying a pledge ; after which 
it was their custom to separate and meet again at a pro- 
miscuous, harmless meal; from which last practice they, 
however, desisted after the publication of my edict, in 
which, agreeably to your orders, I forbade any societies of 
that sort. On which account I judged it the more neces- 
sary to inquire by torture from two females, who were 
said to be deaconesses, what is the real truth, but nothing 
could I collect, except a depraved and excessive supersti- 
tion. Deferring, therefore, any further investigation, I de- 
termined to consult you. For the number of culprits is so 
great as to call for serious consultation. Many persons are 
informed against of every age, and of both sexes, and more 
still will be in the same situation. The contagion of the 
superstition hath spread, not only through cities, but even 
villages and the country. Not that I think it impossible to 
check and to correct it. The success of my endeavors 
hitherto forbids such desponding thoughts ; for the temples, 
once almost desolate, begin to be frequented ; and the sa- 
cred solemnities, which had long been intermitted, are now 
attended afresh ; and the sacrificial victims are now sold 
everywhere, which could once scarce find a purchaser. 
Whence I conclude that many might be reclaimed were 
the hope of impunity on repentance absolutely confirmed." 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



25 



TRAJAN TO PLINY. 

" You have done perfectly right, my dear Pliny, in the 
inquiry which you have made concerning christians. For 
truly no one general rule can be laid down, which will 
apply itself to all cases. These people must not be sought 
after. If they are brought before you and convicted, let 
them be capitally punished ; yet with this restriction, that 
if any renounce Christianity and evidence his sincerity by 
supplicating our gods, however suspected he may be for 
the past, he shall obtain pardon for the future on his re- 
pentance. But anonymous libels in no case ought to be 
attended to ; for the precedent would be of the worst sort, 
and perfectly incongruous to the maxims of my govern- 
ment." 

The letter of Pliny was written about seventy 
years after the crucifixion ; and it carries along 
with it plenary demonstration that, at the time of 
its date, Christianity had thoroughly pervaded the 
provinces of which he was governor. He says ; 
"Many persons are informed against of every age 
and of both sexes, and more still will be in the same 
situation. The contagion of the superstition hath 
spread not only through cities, but even villages 
and the country." He affirms that until the adop- 
tion of his vigorous measures against the innova- 
ting faith, the temples of the polytheists had been 

2 



26 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



deserted, their profane solemnities long intermitted, 
and that the sacrificial victims could scarcely have 
found a purchaser. This strong language is used 
without limitation ; it is applied, not to particular 
sections alone, but to the entire countries under 
his jurisdiction. 

Nor did Pliny intimate that the evangelical re- 
ligion had just risen, like a sudden meteor, above 
the horizon. He reports that some of the prison- 
ers, though they had denied under the terrors of 
threatened death that they were then christians, 
admitted that they had been such more than twenty 
years before. It follows that more than twenty 
years before their examination, and therefore with- 
in the first half-century after the crucifixion, the 
Gospel had accomplished its triumphal march even 
to the sequestered borders of the Black Sea. The 
letter of the Roman governor caused no surprise at 
the imperial court. The emperor treated " the 
contagion" of Pontus and Bithynia, not as a 
strange phenomenon peculiar to those provinces, 
but as a noxious poison common to his vast do- 
minions. 

Pliny's letter illustrates other important truths. 
It shows that the christian church revered Jesus 
Christ as its Founder, and worshipped him as God ; 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



27 



that it had its sabbaths, its officers, its regular 
assemblies, its code of theism and of ethics; that 
its doctrines and precepts enjoined abstinence from 
thefts, robberies, adulteries, violations of promise, 
and all manner of wickedness ; and that the real 
believer was ever ready to endure the torture and 
the death, rather than abjure his faith. 

The correspondence between the provincial gov- 
ernor and his imperial master does not speak in 
terms of the existence of any christian writings. 
But the inference is strong, that, at that enlightened 
period, a religious system so completely organized, 
embodying such a code of doctrinal and practical 
truths, professing to be proclaimed for the instruc- 
tion and salvation of mankind, would not have been 
allowed to rest for seventy years after the death of 
its Founder on mere oral communication. The 
Augustan age ended not with the life of Augustus; 
but, like the Elizabethan era, continued loner after 
the death of the sovereign from whom it derived 
its name. It was an age distinguished for the 
written effusions of mind. For the sword of the 
iron republic had been substituted the pen of the 
lettered empire. It would have been passing 
strange had christian zeal and intelligence left un- 
recorded, for three score years and ten, the birth, 



28 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



teachings, miracles, death and resurrection of the 
Son of God. The antiquity of the evangelical 
writings is a necessary deduction from the corres- 
pondence between Pliny and the sovereign of the 
Roman world. 

It was the immemorial usage of republican and 
imperial Rome, that each governor of a province 
should transmit to the central authority of the state 
official accounts of all extraordinary events occur- 
ring within his jurisdiction. Of this custom the 
letter from Pliny to Trajan is a memorable ex- 
ample. Such usage is necessarily incident to all 
states possessing conquered or detached provinces. 
If the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was a reality, it 
was an extraordinary event. He had claimed to 
be a divine person, and the author of stupendous 
miracles ; his disciples publicly announced his res 
urrection from the dead. These things were with- 
in the knowledge of Pontius Pilate, the procurator 
of Judea. That he officially communicated to Ti- 
berius the tale of wonders, is a conclusion to be 
drawn from the circumstances of the case, without 
the aid of extraneous evidence. Had he omitted 
the communication he would have violated the an- 
cient and universal usages of the commonwealth 
and of the empire ; he would have been guilty of a 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



29 



gross breach of official duty ; he would have been 
justly amenable to the censure of the emperor, and 
to ignominious expulsion from office. The pre- 
sumption that public magistrates have duly per- 
formed the obligations imposed on them by their 
respective stations, is a fundamental principle of 
universal jurisprudence. 

But the intrinsic presumption that Pilate trans- 
mitted to the Roman government his official report 
of the life, death, and alleged resurrection of Jesus 
Christ is confirmed by extraneous evidence. The 
fact of his report is repeatedly averred by the early 
christian fathers. Speaking of the wonderful dem- 
onstrations which accompanied the crucifixion of 
our Lord, Justin Martyr, in his first Apology for 
Christianity, addressed to the authorities of the Ro- 
man empire, about the year one hundred and forty 
of the christian era, thus speaks ; " And that these 
things were so done, you may know from the acts 
written in the time of Pontius Pilate."* Tertullian 
in his Apology for the new faith, also addressed to 
the Roman government, and written about the 
year one hundred and ninety-eight, speaks thus ; 
" Of all these things relating to Christ, Pilate, him- 



* Justin Martyr, Apol. prima, p. 65, *l% 



♦ 



30 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

self in conscience already a christian, sent an ac- 
count to Tiberius, then emperor."* And else- 
where, in the same chapter, he thus appeals to the 
pagan authorities ; " Search your own public doc- 
uments. At the moment of Christ's death, the light 
departed from the sun, and the land was darkened 
at noon ; which wonder is related in your own 
annals, and is preserved in your archives to this 
day." 

Eusebius, who wrote about the year three hun- 
dred and fifteen, speaks in this manner ; " When 
the wonderful resurrection of our Saviour and his 
ascension to heaven were in the mouths of all men, 
it being an ancient custom for governors of prov- 
inces to write to the emperor and give him an 
account of new and remarkable occurrences, that 
he might not be ignorant of anything, Pilate in- 
formed the emperor of the resurrection of Christ, 
and likewise of his reputed miracles, and that, being 
raised up after he had been put to death, he was 
already believed by many to be a god.f The re- 
port of Pontius Pilate to Tiberius is also affirmed 
by Epiphanius, Chrisostom, Orosius, and Gregory 
of Tours. 



* Tertullian, Apol. c. 21. f Euseb. Eccl. Hist. lib. 11, c. 2. 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



31 



Modern infidels have affected to sneer at these 
statements of the christian fathers. But the state- 
ments were never contradicted by the heathen in- 
fidels of the first four centuries. Celsus attempted 
an elaborate confutation of the new faith, and pub- 
lished his treatise about the year one hundred and 
seventy-five, and thirty-five years after the appear- 
ance of Justin Martyr's first Apology. The pagan 
unbeliever had the christian work before him, and 
must have studied it diligently, page by page and 
sentence by sentence. Why did not the learned 
and vindictive Celsus meet and contradict the bold 
appeal of Justin Martyr to " the acts written in the 
time of Pontius Pilate ?" He did not because he 
dared not. By such contradiction he would have 
come into direct collision with the public records 
of the empire. 

About the year two hundred and seventy, and a 
little more than seventy years after the publication 
of Tertullian's Apology, heathen infidelity, personi- 
fied by Porphyry, one of its most renowned cham- 
pions, made its second great effort to write down 
the faith of the cross. Open before the eyes of 
Porphyry lay the writings of the two christian 
apologists ; his ears he could not close to the chal- 
lenge of Tertullian, " Search your own public doc- 



32 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



uments." How overwhelming must have been the 
triumph of the pagan combatant could he have 
averred and shown that the imperial archives con- 
tained not the pretended report from the procurator 
of Judea. How would the christian world have 
been humbled and confounded as it gazed on the 
public immolation of its two favorite advocates by 
infidel hands, not as martyrs to the truth, but as 
fabricators of falsehood! Yet upon the pressing 
emergency, the wary Porphyry stood speechless as 
the grave ! 

In the fourth century, and about fifty years after 
Eusebius had reiterated the standing appeal of 
evangelical antiquity to Pilate's official report of the 
crucifixion, the apostate Julian brandished his im- 
perial pen against the new religion. He was an 
accomplished scholar and a profound statesman. 
His own experience had impressed on his mind the 
ancient and universal usage of the empire, requir- 
ing from governors of provinces official reports of 
such extraordinary events as marked their admin- 
istrations. He had before him the works of Justin 
Martyr, of Tertullian and of Eusebius. He could 
not be ignorant that the appeal of the faithful to 
the report of Pontius Pilate had been sounded and 
echoed and reverberated along the track of centu- 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



33 



ries. He must have felt the pressure of the appeal. 
Yet even the emperor Julian passed over in omi- 
nous silence the subject of that memorable letter 
from the governor of Judea to his imperial mas- 
ter, which, unless subtracted by pagan cunning, 
still survived a speaking witness from his own ar- 
chives. 

It is a principle of universal justice that, if a 
party rightfully demands the production of a docu- 
ment in the possession of his adversary, its non- 
production creates a decisive presumption against 
the party withholding it. For its suppression must 
have been prompted by views incompatible with 
the development of truth. This principle strongly 
commends itself to the common sense of mankind. 
The official report of the crucifixion, transmitted 
by Pilate to Tiberius, was a document perhaps de- 
cisive of the great controversy between Christianity 
and unbelief. It was in the hostile custody of 
heathen Rome, who ought to have held it for the 
common benefit of all her subjects. The advocates 
of primitive Christianity appealed to the document, 
and demanded its production, and named the place 
of its custody, and stated its momentous contents. 
The champions of paganism remained dumb as the 

idols they worshipped. This silence, continued for 

2* 



34 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

centuries, was a virtual confession in that vast 
temple of justice, whose circumference was earth 
and whose canopy was heaven — made in the pres- 
ence of men, angels and God — binding through all 
ages of time — that the christian asseverations of 
the existence and contents of the document were 
" the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
truth." 

The scriptural account of the conduct of Pon- 
tius Pilate while sitting in his judgment hall, forti- 
fies the belief that he must have sent to his impe- 
rial sovereign just such a report as the early chris- 
tian fathers affirmed. At the close of the trial of 
his Creator, he could not choose but " believe and 
tremble." Then followed the rending of the rocks, 
the quaking of the earth and the darkening of the 
sun, so demonstrative of the divinity of the Cruci- 
fied. To none of these events was the Roman 
governor a stranger. Nor could he have closed 
his ears to the startling intelligence that the dead 
had risen to life. In his communication to the im- 
perial government, he would not have been likely 
to suppress the astounding miracles, or his own 
conviction that the condemned, the executed, the 
resuscitated Martyr was the Son of God. No 
wonder that heathen Rome suppressed, and finally 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



35 



destroyed the procurator's official report. For, to 
the impartial students of truth, the report of Pontius 
Pilate would have demonstrated, not only the 
existence and martyrdom of Jesus Christ, but even 
his very godhead. 

Modern unbelief may possibly suggest that, the 
original works of Celsus, Porphyry and Julian be- 
ing lost, we have no grounds at the present day for 
the conclusion that they did not controvert Pilate's 
alleged letter to Tiberius. But such conclusion is 
sustained, not only by the copious fragments of 
those infidel works transcribed and preserved in 
various christian writings, but also by the control- 
ling fact that, while the works of Celsus, Porphyry 
and Julian remained entire, christian authors 
went on for centuries reiterating the charge of the 
letter from the procurator of Judea to the Roman 
emperor, without the slightest intimation that the 
existence of the letter had ever been controverted 
or doubted. Had Celsus denied the charge of 
Justin Martyr, Tertullian, who wrote about twen- 
ty-five years after Celsus, would not have dared 
to repeat it, without some allusion to its nega- 
tion. Had Porphyry denied the charge, it would 
not have been again unqualifiedly repeated by 
Eusebius, who wrote about forty-five years after 



36 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



Porphyry. And had the emperor Julian about the 
year three hundred and sixty, denied the charge, 
it would not have been still repeated by Epipha- 
nius, who wrote about the year three hundred and 
seventy, and by Chrisostom, who wrote about the 
year four hundred, and by Orosius, who wrote 
about the year four hundred and twenty, and by 
Gregory of Tours, who wrote about the year five 
hundred and seventy. 

Even when Epiphanius, Chrisostom, Orosius and 
Gregory gave their writings to the world, the 
works of Celsus, Porphyry and Julian were still in 
being. If the existence of the alleged letter from 
Pilate to Tiberius had been controverted by Celsus, 
Porphyry, or Julian, the two former the semi- 
official organs, and the latter the imperial sovereign 
of the pagan world, no christian author would 
afterwards publicly affirm its existence without 
some reference to its having been denied. The 
omission of such reference would have betrayed a 
want of honor and honesty ; and the breach of 
good faith must have led to detection and exposure 
by heathen or Jewish enemies, to the lasting dis- 
credit of the christian name. Upon the supposi- 
tion of its having been denied in the face of the 
world the existence of the letter was no longer an 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



37 



unquestioned fact ; and its subsequent averment as 
an unquestioned fact would have impugned the 
principles of common integrity. Policy, if not con- 
science, would have deterred any christian author 
from the commission of such a barefaced breach of 
candor. It is, then, an inevitable conclusion, that 
the official report of Pilate to the Roman emperor 
was not controverted by any pagan author of an- 
cient times. 

There was a rumor in the early church that, 
upon receiving the report from the governor of 
Judea, Tiberius proposed to the senate that Jesus 
Christ should be enrolled on the calendar of Roman 
gods ; and that the senate declined the proposition 
because they held it to be their privilege, and not 
the prerogative of the emperor, to nominate the 
candidates for deification ; and more especially be- 
cause Tiberius had himself declined the acceptance 
of that honor from the Roman senate. Some mod- 
ern writers, deeming the rumor improbable, have 
sought thence to cast a shade of suspicion upon the 
fact of Pilate's report. But between the fact and 
the floating rumor, no real affinity exists. The 
rumor was probably true; but, if unfounded, its 
falsity affects not the impregnable reality of the 
official report. Faith in history, if disturbed by 



38 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



unimportant errors in collateral details, would be 
in danger of degenerating into universal and cheer- 
less skepticism. 

Our argument rests, not on the subsequent acts 
of Tiberius or of his senate, but on the original 
letter of Pontius Pilate, written in his official ca- 
pacity and filed in the archives of the empire. It 
is the Roman procurator of Judea — who presided 
at the trial of Him of Nazareth, and marked well 
his godlike look and bearing — who felt the shudder- 
ing of the earth, and saw the obscuration of the 
physical sun when the Sun of righteousness expired 
— that we invoke as a paramount witness to the 
being and crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and the truth 
of our holy religion. Pontius Pilate has indeed 
gone to his long account. But he left his solemn 
attestation behind him — signed by his own hand — 
authenticated under his oath of office — recording 
at the time and place of their occurrence the as- 
tounding demonstrations of which his own senses 
had taken 1 cognizance. That this transcendent 
document, required by the immemorial usages of 
republican and imperial Rome, was drawn, signed, 
sealed and sent to the emperor, and lodged in the 
depository of the national records, was expressly 
and continually affirmed by the primitive church, 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



39 



and unequivocally admitted by the expressive si- 
lence of heathen antiquity. 

We will venture to suggest, though with defer- 
ence, that possibly the argument derived from the 
official communication of Pontius Pilate to the Ro- 
man emperor, may not have been pressed by mod- 
ern advocates of the Gospel, quite as strenuously 
as its importance would seem to justify. In our 
estimate, that communication holds a conspicuous 
place among the christian proofs. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 

Further heathen testimonies — Celsus wrote against Christianity 
about one century after promulgation of Gospel — Extracts from 
his works — Admits that Jesus Christ was a real personage— 
And that Gospel was written by his primitive disciples — Admits 
generally the gospel history — Virtually admits its miracles — 
Doctor Doddridge's estimate of the extracts from Celsus — Por- 
phyry wrote against Christianity about the year two hundred 
and seventy — Speaks of Jesus Christ as a real personage — And 
of Gospel as written by his primitive disciples — Some extracts 
from his works — Emperor Julian wrote against Christianity 
about the year three hundred and sixty — Admits reality of 
Jesus Christ and antiquity of Gospel — Extracts from his works — 
Jewish testimonies — Josephus — The Mishna — The Talmuds. 

The demonstration from heathen testimonials 
that Jesus Christ was not a fictitious personage, 
and that the Gospel was composed and published by 
his faithful contemporaries, will be rendered more 
perfect by a closer review of the fragments trans- 
mitted to us from the works of the three distin- 
guished unbelievers who wrote elaborate tre atises 
against Christianity during the earliest centuries of 
the church. We shall now present copious ex- 
tracts from these fragments. Most of the proposed 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 41 

extracts are irreverent ; and some of them are pro- 
fane. We should not stain our pages with quota- 
tions offensive to pious feeling, were it not for the 
consideration that we thence derive, even from the 
confessions of the primitive enemies to our holy 
faith, overwhelming evidence, never to be gain- 
sayed even by skepticism itself, that the Gospel 
was not the forgery of an age posterior to its as- 
sumed date, and that its Founder actually lived and 
taught and suffered. We hope thus to transmute 
into healthful aliment the poison of infidel impiety. 
There is a potency in confessions from hostile lips, 
deliberately and intelligently made, which place 
them almost at the head of human proofs. " Out 
of thy own mouth will I judge thee," was a process 
of conviction strikingly approved by him who spake 
as never man spake. 

The pagan Celsus published his voluminous and 
labored argument against Christianity about the 
year one hundred and seventy-five of the christian 
era. It was called " The True Word." About 
sixty years after its appearance Origen wrote his 
memorable response in eight books. The treatise 
of Celsus has perished ; but while it remained in 
existence, Origen copied from it into his answer 
numerous passages. Through the answer of Ori- 



42 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



gen we are made acquainted with the work of 
Celsus. 

It is a rule of natural and universal jurisprudence, 
that whenever the original is lost, its contents may 
be shown by a verified copy or parol proof. This 
rule is a vital element of the social structure. No- 
thing human is beyond the reach of casualty. Mer- 
cantile instruments, sealed bonds, testamentary 
bequests, title papers to real estate, legislative rec- 
ords, may all be destroyed by conflagration or 
perish in the current of time. Unless lost origi- 
nals could be supplied by parol proof or verified 
copies, society must relapse into its primeval dis- 
organization. 

No copy could be better authenticated than are 
the extracts from Celsus transcribed into the work 
of Origen. He had the original before him. The 
question discussed was of absorbing interest, and 
he knew that the original and his response would 
be anxiously studied by friend and foe. He stood 
pledged as a man and as a christian that, when he 
professed to quote the words of his adversary, he 
quoted them truly. Any designed misquotation 
would have been suicidal ; detection must inevi- 
tably have followed ; and the fraud would have re- 
coiled like a thunderbolt upon his own head. His 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



43 



great work bears intrinsic demonstrations of honor 
and candor. His extracts from Celsus are equiva- 
lent to copies verified by oath. A judicial affirma- 
tion could have imparted to them no additional 
sanctity. 

The passages from Celsus transcribed into the 
pages of Origen leave no possibility of doubt that 
the Gospel was in existence anterior to the time 
when the infidel wrote. His writings show that he 
had studied it with a diligent, though prejudiced 
eye. He could not thus have studied it unless it 
had been antecedently in being. He could not 
have answered writings not then extant. Celsus 
introduces into his work a fictitious Jew, who is 
often made his speaker. In our quotations we 
need not distinguish between the passages profess- 
edly uttered by Celsus, and those purporting to 
come from the mouth of the Jew ; in either case 
they are alike the words of the heathen philosopher. 

Extracts from Celsus follow : — 

" I could say many things concerning the affairs of Jesus, 
and those too true, different from those written by the 
disciples of Jesus." " It is a fiction of theirs" (the writers 
of the Gospel) " that Jesus foreknew and foretold all things 
which befell him." " Some of the believers, as if they were 
drunk, take a liberty to alter the gospel from its first wri- 



44 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



ting three or four ways, or oftener, that, when they are 
pressed hard and one reading has been confuted, they may 
disown that and nee to another." " These things then we 
have alleged to you out of your own writings, not needing 
any other witnesses. Thus you are beaten with your own 
weapons." " He" (Jesus) " threatens and feebly reproaches 
when he says, 4 Woe unto you,' and 4 1 foretell unto you :" 
for thereby he plainly confesseth his disability to persuade ; 
which is so far below a God, that it is even unworthy a 
wise man." " light ! O truth ! Jesus with his own 
mouth expressly declares these things as you have recorded 
it, that there will come unto you other men, with like 
wonders, wicked men and impostors." " Moses encoura- 
geth the people to get riches and destroy their enemies. 
But his" (God's) " Son, the Nazarean man, delivers quite 
contrary laws. Nor will he admit a rich man, or one that 
affects dominion, to have access to his Father. Nor will he 
allow men to take more care for food or treasure than the 
ravens ; nor to provide for clothing, so much as the lilies : 
and to him that has smitten once, he directs to offer that 
he may smite again." " To the sepulchre there came two 
angels, as is said by some, or, as by others, one only." " It 
is but a few years since he delivered this doctrine, who is 
now reckoned by the christians to be the Son of God." 
" Having been turned out of doors by her husband, she," 
(the mother of our Lord) " wandered about in a shameful 
manner till she had brought forth Jesus in an obscure 
place ; and he being in want, served in Egypt for a liveli- 
hood ; and having there learned some charms, such as the 
Egyptians were fond of, he returned home, and then valu- 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



45 



ing himself upon those charms, he set up himself for a God." 
"It -was given out by Jesus, that Chaldeans were moved at 
the time of his birth to come and worship him as a God 
when he was but a little child, and that this was told to 
Herod the tetrarch, who issued out an order to have all 
killed who had been born about that time, intending to 
kill him with the rest, lest, if he should live to mature age, 
he should take the government." " What occasion had 
you" (Jesus) "when an infant, to be carried into Egypt, 
lest you should be killed ? A God has no reason to be 
afraid of death. And now an angel comes from heaven to 
direct you and your relations to flee into Egypt, lest you 
should be taken up and put to death ; as if the great God, 
who had already sent two angels upon your account, could 
not have preserved you, his own Son, at home." " But if 
he" (Herod) " was afraid that when you was come of age 
you should reign in his stead, why did you not reign when 
you was of age ? But so far from that, the Son of God 
wanders about, cringing like a necessitous beggar." " You 
say that when you was washed by John, there lighted 
upon you the appearance of a bird. What credible wit- 
ness has said that he saw this ? Or who heard the voice 
from heaven declaring you to be the Son of God excepting 
yourself : and if you are to be credited, one other of those 
who have been punished like yourself." " Jesus taking to 
himself ten or eleven abjects, vile publicans and sailors, 
went about with them, getting his subsistence in a base and 
shameful manner." " How should we take him for a God 
who, as we have understood, performed none of those things 
which were promised ? But when we have judged him 



46 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



guilty and would bring him to punishment, though he 
shamefully hid himself and fled away, yet was taken, being 
betrayed by those whom he called his disciples. But it 
became not a God to flee, nor to be taken and executed ; 
least of all did it become him to be deserted and betrayed 
by his companions, who knew all his secrets, who followed 
him as their master, who esteemed him a saviour and the 
Son and messenger of the most high God." " If he fore- 
told who should betray him and who should deny him, 
how came it to pass that they did not fear him as a God, 
so that the one should not dare to betray him nor the 
other to deny him ? But they betrayed him and denied 
him ; so little did they regard him." " It was God who 
foretold these things ; therefore there was a necessity that 
they should come to pass. God therefore compelled his 
own disciples and prophets, with whom he ate and drank, 
to be wicked and abominable, for whose welfare above all 
others he ought to have been concerned. Never did man 
betray another with whom he sat at table. Here he who 
sits at table with God betrays him, and, which is still worse, 
God himself lays snares for those who sit at table with him, 
making them impious traitors." " If he thought fit to un- 
dergo such things, and if, in obedience to the Father, he 
suffered death, it is apparent that they could not be pain- 
ful and grievous to him, he being a God and consenting to 
them. Why then does he lament and bewail, and pray 
that the fear of destruction may be removed, saying to this 
purpose, O Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away ?" 
" Why did he not now, at last, if not before, deliver him- 
self from this ignominy, and do justice upon them who re- 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



47 



viled both him and his Father ?" " They who conversed 
with him when alive, and heard his voice and followed him 
as their master, when they saw him under punishment and 
dying, were so far from dying with him, or for him, or 
being induced to despise sufferings, that they denied they 
were his disciples ; but now-a-days you die with him." 
" But let us consider whether any one that has really died 
ever rose again in the same body, unless you think that the 
stories of others are indeed, as well as seem to be, fables, 
while your fable is probable and credible because of his 
voice on the cross when he expired, and the earthquake and 
the darkness ; and because that when he was living he 
could not defend himself, but after he was dead he arose 
and showed the marks of his punishment, and how his 
hands had been pierced. But who saw all this ? Why, a 
distracted woman, as you say, and one or two of the same 
imposture, and some dreamers, who fancied they saw 
things as they desired to have them, the same that has 
happened to innumerable people." "If he would make 
manifest his divine power, he should have shown himself to 
them that derided him, and to him that condemned him, 
and indeed to all ; for surely he had no reason to fear any 
mortal blow now after he had died, and, as you say, was a 
God." " When he was neglected in the body, he was con- 
tinually preaching to all men ; but when he should have 
given full assurance to all men, he shows himself to one 
woman and his associates." " When he was punished he 
was seen of all, but when risen, by one ; the contrary to 
which ought rather to have been." " If he would be hid, 
why was there a voice from heaven declaring him to be the 



48 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

Son of God ? And if he would not be hid, why did he suf- 
fer, why did he die ? Is it not exceeding absurd, that you 
should desire and hope for the resurrection of the same body, 
as if we had nothing more excellent, nor more precious V 
" Omitting many things that might be alleged against what 
they say of their master, let us allow him to be truly an angel. 
Is he the first, and the only one that has come ? or have 
there been others before ? If they should say, he only, 
they are easily convicted of falsehood : for they say that 
others have often come, and in particular, that there came 
an angel to his sepulchre, some say one, others two, to tell 
the women that he was risen ; for the Son of God, it seems, 
could not open the sepulchre, but wanted another to remove 
the stone. And there came also an angel to the carpenter 
about Mary's pregnancy, and another angel to direct them 
to take the child and flee." " At first they" (the christians) 
" were few in number, and then they agreed. But being in- 
creased and spread abroad, they divide again and again, 
and every one will have a party of his own."* 

Should any person, after reading these passages, 
be inclined to censure their introduction into our 
pages, we would plead the authority of Origen in 
the third century, and of Lardner in the eighteenth. 
These distinguished christian authors transcribed 
into their works, not only the passages quoted by 
us from Celsus, but added many others even more 
irreverent and profane. We would plead another 



* Lardner's Credibility of Gospel History. Heathen Testimonies. 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



49 



authority, perhaps still more touching to the pious 
heart. Lardner affirms that the devout Doddridge 
observed to him, that few learned men knew the 
importance of the remains of Celsus, and urged 
him to give prominence to the point when he came 
to treat of that heathen writer ; adding " that an 
abridgment of the history of Christ may be found 
in Celsus." The sainted author of " The Rise and 
Progress of Religion in the Soul," compiled a co- 
pious digest of those infidel remains, which he left 
behind him at his decease, and which Lardner has 
copied at large. In that digest, Doddridge, in ex- 
patiating upon the value of the fragments of Celsus 
to the christian argument, thus exclaims, " Who 
can forbear adoring the depth of divine wisdom in 
laying such a firm foundation for our faith in the 
Gospel history, in the writings of one who was so 
inveterate an enemy to it, and so indefatigable in 
his attempts to overthrow it !"* 

It is not to the antiquity of the Gospel alone that 
Celsus bears witness. He distinctly acknowledges 
that Jesus Christ was a real personage. He affirms 
that, having served in Egypt* " and there learned 
some charms," he afterwards " set up himself for a 



* Lardner's Credibility of Gospel History, Vol. IV. p. 145, 147. 
3 



50 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



God that he was followed by " ten or eleven ab- 
jects, vile publicans and sailors ;" that he, when 
the government had "judged him guilty, and would 
bring him to punishment/' " hid himself and fled 
away, yet was taken, being betrayed by those 
whom he called his disciples." And the impious 
unbeliever concedes that the evangelical doctrines 
were delivered by Him, who was, when he wrote, 
" reckoned by the christians to be the Son of God." 
Celsus also expressly admits, that the Gospel was 
written by the primitive apostles. He declares ; 
" I could say many things concerning the affairs of 
Jesus, and those, too, true, different from those 
written by the disciples of Jesus." By " the dis- 
ciples of Jesus" the infidel meant not the professors 
of his own day. Those he sometimes terms be- 
lievers, sometimes christians. It was to the earliest 
followers of our Lord alone that he applied the ap- 
pellation of " disciples of Jesus." 

When Celsus wrote in the year one hundred and 
seventy-five, the average age of the books compo- 
sing the Gospel was something over a century. 
Some of them had been written a little earlier, and 
some a little later ; but the medium date of their 
publication was about one hundred and fifteen 
years before the date assigned for the work of 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



51 



Celsus. This appears from the writings of many 
of the christian fathers ; and may be gathered from 
the Sacred Record itself. The era of the books 
composing the Gospel may also be inferred from 
the preserved fragments of the pagan philosopher 
in question. Celsus does not, indeed, expressly 
affirm that, when he wrote, the christian writings 
were about an hundred years old. But he gives 
no intimation that the phenomenon of Christianity 
had sprung up in his own lifetime. He speaks of 
it as the faith of a by-gone, as well as of the exist- 
ing generation. He says, " They who conversed 
with him" (Jesus) " when alive and heard his voice 
and followed him as their master, when they saw him 
under punishment and dying, were so far from 
dying with him, or for him, or being induced to 
despise sufferings, that they denied they were his 
disciples ; but now-a-days you die with him." Again 
he says ; " At first they/' (the faithful) " were few 
in number ; and then they agreed. But being in- 
creased and spread abroad, they divide again and 
again, and every one will have a party of his own." 
The increase, scattering abroad, and successive 
divisions of the once united little band, and their 
array in multifarious and independent parties, were 
changes and revolutions which could scarcely have 



52 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



been accomplished within a century after the pub- 
lication of the evangelical writings. And that not 
much over a century had intervened between the 
promulgation of the Gospel and the time when 
Celsus wrote, is also inferable from the transcribed 
fragments of his work. He admits that the birth 
of Jesus was in the reign of Herod. 

About the year two hundred and seventy of our 
era, the heathen Porphyry wrote his elaborate 
treatise against Christianity in fifteen books. His 
work is lost. He was answered by Methodius, 
Eusebius and Apollinarius. Their confutations 
have also perished. All the remains of the heathen 
treatise, to which we can have access, are to be 
gleaned from surviving christian writings of early 
date, into which they were transcribed while the 
work of Porphyry was in existence. These re- 
mains are few in number ; but they are decisive of 
the real existence of Jesus Christ, and of the anti- 
quity of the Gospel. 

In speaking of the memorable conversion of 
Origen to Christianity, Porphyry said : 

" An example of this absurd method may be observed in 
a man, whom I saw when I was very young, who was then 
in great esteem, and is so still for the writings which he 
has left behind him ; I mean Origen, whose authority is 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



53 



very great with the teachers of this doctrine. For he, be- 
ing a hearer of Ammonius, who was so eminent in our time 
for skill in philosophy, in point of learning made great im- 
provements by the instructions of that master, but, with 
regard to the right way of life, took a quite different course 
with him. For Ammonius, a christian by birth, and 
brought up by christian parents, as soon as he was arrived 
to maturity of age, and had gained a taste for philosophy, 
returned to the way of life prescribed by the laws. But 
Origen, a Greek, and educated in the Greek sentiment, 
went over to the barbarian temerity ; to which he devoted 
himself, and corrupted himself and the principles of literature 
which he had received : as to his life, living as a christian, 
and contrary to the laws ; with regard to his sentiments 
concerning things and the Deity, a Greek, and joining Greek 
sentiments with their absurd fables." 

It seems that in some copies of Matthew, extant 
in the days of Porphyry, the prophecy named in 
the thirty-fifth verse of the thirteenth chapter of 
that evangelist was incorrectly ascribed to Isaiah. 
The heathen philosopher seized with avidity on the 
clerical error, and thus taunted his christian oppo- 
nents ; " Your evangelist Matthew was so ignorant 
as to say; which was written by the prophet 
Isaiah, I will open my mouth in parables, I will 
utter things kept secret from the foundation of the 
world." This is palpable demonstration that the 
Gospel of Saint Matthew was in existence at the 



54 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

time Porphyry wrote. And Porphyry must also 
have read the Gospel of Saint John, for he thus 
expressed himself ; " If the Son of God be Word, 
he must be either outward Word or inward Word. 
But he is neither this nor that. Therefore he is 
not Word." So, also, Porphyry must have known 
that, long before his day, Jesus Christ had been 
revered as a divine Being. For he declared, " And 
now people wonder that this distemper has op- 
pressed the city so many years, Esculapius and the 
other gods no longer conversing with men. For 
since Jesus has been honored, none have received 
any public benefit from the gods." # 

The ancient christian writers, whose works sur- 
vive, abound in details of the substance of Por- 
phyry's vituperations against Christianity ; but we 
know of no other cases where his very words have 
been transcribed. And in our extracts from pagan 
authors we would adhere to their exact language. 

The emperor Julian wrote his voluminous work 
against Christianity about the year three hundred 
and sixty. His work has been destroyed by the 
lapse of time. Several christian fathers replied to 
it. Among the most distinguished was Cyril, who 



* Lardner's Credibility of Gospel History : Heathen Testimonies. 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



55 



wrote about sixty years after the appearance of the 
imperial treatise. He has assured us that he cited 
Julian in his own words ; and would not have com- 
promitted his character in the face of his own assu- 
rances by fraudulent misquotation. And even the 
arch-skeptic Gibbon, in speaking of the work of 
Julian, says ; " Some fragments have been tran- 
scribed and preserved by his adversary, the vehe- 
ment Cyril of Alexandria" — without daring to 
insinuate that the illustrious christian failed in good 
faith or accuracy.* 

Extracts from Julian follow : 

" I think it right for me to show to all men the reasons 
by which I have been convinced that the religion of the 
Galileans is a human contrivance badly put together, having 
in it nothing divine. But abusing the childish, irrational 
part of the soul which delights in fable, they have intro- 
duced a heap of wonderful works, to give it the appearance 
of truth." " That Moses says God was the God of Israel 
only and of Judea, and that they were his chosen people, I 
shall demonstrate presently ; and that not only he, but the 
prophets after him, and Jesus, the Nazarine, say the same ; 
yea, and Paul also, who excelled all the jugglers and im- 
postors that ever were." " That God from the beginning 
took care of the Jews only, and that they were his chosen 
lot, appears not only from Moses and Jesus, but from Paul 



* Gibbon, Vol. IV. page 81. 



56 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



also ; though this may be justly thought strange in Paul : 
but upon every occasion, like a polypus upon the rocks, he 
changeth his notions of God ; at one time affirming that 
the Jews only are God's heritage ; at another time, to per- 
suade the Greeks and gain them over to his side, saying, is 
he God of the Jews only? Yes, of the gentiles also." 
" Jesus, whom you celebrate, was one of Caesar's subjects. 
If you dispute it, I will prove it by and by. But it may as 
well be done now. For yourselves allow that he was en- 
rolled with his father and mother in the time of Cyrenius. 
But after he was born, what good did he do to his rela- 
tions ? For they would not, as it is said, believe on him. 
And yet that stiff-necked and hard-hearted people believed 
Moses. But Jesus, who rebuked the winds, and walked on 
the seas, and cast out demons, and, as you will have it, 
made the heaven and the earth, (though none of his dis- 
ciples presumed to say this of him except John only, nor 
he clearly and distinctly ; however, let it be allowed that 
he said so) could not order his designs so as to save his 
friends and relations." " But Jesus having persuaded a few 
among you, and those the worst of men, has now been 
celebrated about three hundred years ; having done nothing 
in his lifetime worthy of remembrance, unless any thinks it 
a mighty matter to heal lame and blind people, and exor- 
cise demoniacs, in the villages of Bethsaidi and Bethany." 
" But you are so unhappy as not to adhere to the things 
delivered to you by the apostles ; but they have been al- 
tered by you for the worse, and carried on to yet greater 
impiety. For neither Paul, nor Matthew, nor Luke, nor 
Mark have dared to call Jesus God. But honest John, un- 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 



57 



derstanding that a great multitude of men in the cities of 
Greece and Italy were seized with this distemper, and hear- 
ing likewise, as I suppose, that the tombs of Peter and 
Paul were respected and frequented, though as yet pri- 
vately only, however having heard of it, he then first pre- 
sumed to advance that doctrine." " But you, miserable 
people, at the same time that ye refuse to worship the 
shield that fell down from Jupiter and is preserved by us, 
which was sent down to us by the great Jupiter, or our 
father Mars, as a certain pledge of the perpetual govern- 
ment of our city, you worship the wood of the cross, and 
make signs of it upon your foreheads, and fix it upon your 
doors. Shall we for this most hate the understanding, or 
pity the simple and ignorant among you who are so very 
unhappy as to leave the immortal gods, and go over to a 
dead Jew." " You have killed not only our people who 
persisted in the ancient religion, but likewise heretics, 
equally deceived with yourselves, but who did not mourn 
the dead man exactly in the same manner as you do. But 
these are your own inventions ; for Jesus has nowhere di- 
rected you to do such things, nor yet Paul. The reason is, 
that they never expected you would have arrived at such 
power. They were contented with deceiving maid-servants 
and slaves, and by them some men and women, such as 
Cornelius and Sergius. If there were then any other men 
of eminence brought over to you, I mean in the times of 
Tiberius and Claudius, when these things happened, let me 
pass for a liar in everything I say." " But why do you not 
observe a pure diet as well as the Jews, but eat all things 
like herbs of the field, believing Peter, because he said, 
3* 



58 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

What God has cleansed that call not thou common. 
What does that mean, unless that God formerly declared 
them to be impure, but now has made them clean ? For 
Moses speaking of four-footed beasts, says, Whatsoever di- 
videth the hoof and cheweth the cud is clean ; but what- 
soever does not do so, that is unclean. If then, since the 
vision of Peter, the swine has chewed the cud, let us believe 
him ; for that would be truly wonderful, if since Peter's 
vision it got that faculty. But if he feigned that vision, or, 
to use your phrase, the revelation at the tanner's, why 
should you believe him in a thing of that nature ?"* 

The infidel historian of declining Rome further 
confirms the genuineness of the passages quoted 
from the apostate emperor, by affirming that 
Lardner has "accurately compiled all that can 
now be discovered of Julian's work against the 
christians. "f 

The confirmation of the Gospel history derived 
from these extracts, is too palpable to need labored 
elucidation. The royal apostate confesses that 
before he wrote, Jesus had been celebrated about 
three hundred years ; that he was enrolled with 
his father and mother for taxation in the time of 
Cyrenius ; that he rebuked the winds and walked 
on the seas, and healed lame and blind people, and 



* Lardner's Credibility of Gospel History. Heathen Testimonies, 
f Gibbon's Rome, Vol IV. p. 81. Note G. 



HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 59 



exorcised demoniacs in the villages of Bethsaidi 
and Bethany ; that Cornelius and Sergius had be- 
come early converts to the faith; that the chief 
events which the New Testament records hap- 
pened in the times of Tiberius and Claudius, and 
were written by the apostles of Jesus. Julian ex- 
pressly names, among the composers of the Gos- 
pel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul, and re- 
fers to Peter as an apostolic chief, and, by impli- 
cation at least, as an evangelical writer. 

The apostate could not have been mistaken 
respecting the reality of the events recorded in 
the Gospel. Baptized and educated in the new 
faith, he became at twenty a convert to idolatry, 
and, upon ascending the throne, changed from 
christian to pagan the religion of the state. The 
startling change demanded public vindication. In 
warring against the creed of his youth, he deemed 
the imperial pen a more efficient weapon than the 
stake, the cross, or the lions, so often employed in 
vain by his infidel predecessors. He had qualified 
himself for the adventurous attempt by rare attain- 
ments in classic and in sacred knowledge. Chris- 
tianity was the great phenomenon of the Augustan 
age, and he had explored its history from its birth 
in the manger of Bethlehem to its assumption of 



60 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



the royal diadem. With the localities and tradi- 
tions of Judea he had become intimately ac- 
quainted. He had studied the prophecies of our 
Lord concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, and 
attempted to falsify those prophecies by rebuilding 
the holy temple. He was familiar with all the ar- 
guments and the calumnies against the religion of 
the Crucified, ever invented by Jewish malignancy 
or by heathen cunning. Had there been anything 
of imposture or of fable in the sacred narratives, 
it would not have escaped the eagle eye of the 
learned emperor, scanning at a glance the whole 
horizon of the three centuries preceding his own 
era. Nor did he stand alone : he was aided by all 
the satellites of polytheism, lay and ecclesiastical. 
He was the representative of the whole pagan 
world. His confession to the fidelity of the chris- 
tian history, may be regarded as the united, 
the solemn, the official confession of heathen an- 
tiquity. 

So much for the pagan testimonials. We now 
proceed to the Jewish. Josephus, the Hebrew 
historian, was born at Jerusalem four years after 
the ascension, and wrote his Jewish Antiquities in 
the year ninety-three of the christian era, about 
twenty-three years after the destruction of the holy 



JEWISH TESTIMONIES. 



61 



city. In that copious and learned work are found 
the following passages : — 

" Brinoino- before them James, the brother of him who is 
called Christ."* " At that time lived Jesus, a wise man, 
if he may be called a man, for he performed many wonder- 
ful works. He was a teacher of such men as received the 
truth with pleasure. He drew over to him many Jews and 
gentiles. This was the Christ ; and when Pilate, at the 
instigation of the chief men among us, had condemned him 
to the cross, they who before had conceived an affection for 
him did not cease to adhere to him ; for on the third clay 
he appeared to them alive again, the divine prophets having 
foretold these and many wonderful things concerning him. 
And the sect of christians so called from him, subsists to 
this day."f 

If these passages are genuine they are an ex- 
press recognition of the truths of Christianity ex- 
torted from the Jewish historian. But the gen- 
uineness of the passages has been denied ; they 
have been considered, even by many christian 
scholars, as the interpolations of a subsequent 
age. Expunge the passages, and the works of Jo- 
sephus contain not the slightest allusion to Jesus 
Christ, or to the religion of which he was the 
Founder. Such silence, if supposed to exist, could 

* Jewish Antiq. lib. xx. cap. ix. § 1. 
f Ibid. lib. xviil cap. iii. § 3. 



62 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

not have been the offspring of ignorance or of in- 
advertence. 

It is impossible that the miracles of Christianity, 
which had filled the world with astonishment, 
should not have reached the ears and impressed 
themselves on the memory of the vigilant Jose- 
phus. If the early history of our faith was so 
familiar to the Roman Tacitus, how could it have 
escaped the knowledge or the recollection of the 
learned Hebrew ? Born and brought up in Jeru- 
salem, within sight of the garden and of the blood- 
stained hill, the nursery where he first began to 
lisp must have been vocal with the tales of won- 
der; the mount of Olives, and Gethsemane, and 
Calvary were no doubt scenes of his boyish pas- 
times ; he may have played on the very spots 
where Jesus kneeled, where Jesus died. 

Nor could Josephus have deemed the narrative 
of the carpenter's Son beneath the dignity of his- 
tory. Christianity, be it a romance or a glorious 
reality, is the loftiest theme to which the historic 
muse has ever aspired. He who thought it worth 
his while to record the impostures of the Galilean 
Judas, and of the Egyptian false prophet, might 
well have deigned to notice the thrilling story of 
the cross, even had he believed it a cunningly-de- 



JEWISH TESTIMONIES. 



63 



vised fable. If Josephus, indeed, omitted any allu- 
sion to the name and miracles of Jesus Christ, the 
omission is far more wonderful than would have 
been the absence of the least allusion to the rise 
and progress of the Gospel in Gibbon's Fall and 
Decline of the Roman Empire, or the total ob- 
livion of the Reformation in Hume's History of 
England. 

Here, then, are presented two alternatives ; 
either the Jewish historian actually wrote the pas- 
sages we have copied from his works, affirming the 
messiahship of Mary's Son, or else he was silent 
upon the subject by design. For ourselves, we 
should deem the christian evidences strengthened 
by the adoption of the latter alternative. More 
impressive than words is often the admission in- 
dicated by silence. Words sometimes escape 
without profound thought ; designed silence im- 
plies cautious deliberation. 

Josephus was of the order of the priesthood. 
When he wrote his Jewish Antiquities, near the 
close of the first century, his mental vision grasped 
at one view the original signs and wonders of Je- 
sus Christ; his crucifixion, with the retiring sun 
and the shuddering earth ; the severed vail of the 
temple ; the stupendous resurrection ; the glorious 



64 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



ascension ; the outpouring of the Holy Ghost at 
pentecost ; the gift of tongues ; the continued 
apostolic miracles ; the supernatural triumphs of 
the persecuted faith in its conquering march from 
kingdom to kingdom, and from continent to con- 
tinent. Brooding over the ruins of Jerusalem, he 
read there the tremendous fulfilment of the pre- 
dictions of the Son of God. Bewildered in the 
contemplation of all these original and supple- 
mental marvels congregated together like moun- 
tain piled upon mountain, the Hebrew rabbi may 
have stood confounded and overwhelmed. With- 
out magnanimity to admit, or hardihood to deny 
that his nation, headed by its priesthood, had 
slain the Lord of glory, the historian of the Jews 
might well have remained speechless. Speech- 
lessness is a confession of guiltiness more potent 
than language. It was the speechlessness of the 
guest without the wedding garment, that crowned 
the evidence upon which he was justly bound 
hand and foot and cast into outer darkness, where 
is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. 

After the death of Josephus, the meagre litera- 
ture of the Jews was concentrated in their Mishna 
and Talmuds. The Mishna was a collection of 
all the Jewish traditions in six books, commencing 



JEWISH TESTIMONIES. 



65 



at a remote period of antiquity and continued until 
near the close of the second century, when it was 
published. To this original text, commentaries 
called the Gemara, were appended; and the text 
and its commentaries together constituted the Tal- 
mud. In process of time two Talmuds appeared ; 
the Jerusalem Talmud, published about the year 
three hundred, in one large folio, and the Babylo- 
nian Talmud, published about the year five hun- 
dred, and w r hich, by successive editions, has ex- 
panded into twelve folios. 

It is a singular fact, that in the Mishna no dis- 
tinct reference to the christian religion can be 
found. The Mishna was compiled by a learned 
Israelite, named Rabbi Judah, then rector of the 
Hebrew school at Tiberias, in Galilee. At the 
time of its compilation, the origin and spread of 
Christianity, and all its reported miracles, had be- 
come the wonder of the world. The heathen Cel- 
sus had recently published against the Gospel his 
voluminous work. Yet upon our holy religion, the 
Rabbi Judah was silent as the grave. Absorbed in 
contemplating the evangelical predictions of the 
destruction of Jerusalem, and their swift fulfilment 
in the smouldering ruins of the beloved city, the 
compiler of the Mishna was lost in amazement ; his 



66 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth ; the speech- 
lessness of Josephus fell upon his successor. 

Nor is any discussion of the truth or untruth of 
Christianity to be found in the Talmuds, volumi- 
nous as those publications have become. Their 
brief and vague allusions to the subject, while vir- 
tually admitting the antiquity of the Gospel, and 
that its Founder and his disciples wrought signs 
and wonders, affect to deride the prodigies as the 
artifices of magic learned in Egypt ; or as having 
been wrought by the right pronunciation of the 
ineffable name of Jehovah, stolen from the temple. 
Neither heathen nor Jewish pen ever dared to inti- 
mate that Jesus Christ was a fictitious personage, 
or that the christian Scriptures were the forgery of 
an age posterior to their assumed date. 

We are not ignorant that there is a chain of 
christian authors, commencing at the apostolic era, 
and stretching downward until long after Christi- 
anity had permanently assumed the imperial purple, 
whose surviving works attest with overpowering 
force the genuineness and antiquity of the books 
composing the Gospel. These holy fathers, whose 
list is headed by the names of Barnabus, Clement 
and Hermas, the companions of the blessed Paul, 
were placed like watchmen along the track of de- 



TESTIMONIES OF THE FATHERS. 67 



scending centuries, with an average interval of only 
about ten years between them, ever intent upon the 
swelling stream of salvation, and exultingly point- 
ing upwards to its divine fountain-head. An 
abridgment of the testimony of this vast host of 
christian witnesses, fills two large quarto volumes 
in the great work upon the historical proofs of 
Christianity, entitled, " The Credibility of the Gos- 
pel History/' to which we have already referred. 
Further compression would vitally impair the 
strength of the testimony. Instead of attempting 
its faint sketch and virtual mutilation within the 
limits of our brief essay, devoted chiefly to the in- 
ternal evidences of the Gospel, we refer the reader 
to the original abridgment compiled by the patient 
and masterly hand of the erudite Lardner. 



CHAPTER III. 



DIVINE REVELATION "WAS COEVAL WITH THE CREATION OF MAN. 

Any supernatural communication from G-od a divine revelation — 
No matter what its form or subject — Human race not from ever- 
lasting — Man created without instinct of brutes, or innate ideas 
to guide him — Our primeval ancestors at their creation were but 
grown-up infants — Utterly inexperienced, they would have per- 
ished from hunger, thirst, cold, or casualties, without supernatural 
instruction — Such instruction a divine revelation — General ex- 
pectation of heathen world before birth of Christ that moral light 
was about to dawn. 

The primary objection of skeptical philosophy 
against the Gospel's claim to inspiration consists in 
the broad proposition, that God has never conde- 
scended to make a preternatural revelation of him- 
self to the children of men. Infidelity confines not 
its attacks to the miraculous outworks of christian 
faith ; it aims its shafts at the heaven-constructed 
citadel within. It repudiates miracles as opposed 
to the common laws of nature ; it discards inspira- 
tion as opposed to those higher laws by which the 
Almighty binds his own infinite Majesty. 

We must bear carefully in mind, that any super- 
natural communication from God to man is a divine 



ANTIQUITY OF REVELATION. 



69 



revelation. Neither its form or its subject is ma- 
terial to its constitution. It is a divine revelation, 
whatever may be its form or its subject, if it has 
come down preternaturally from the Deity. In our 
present chapter, we shall attempt to prove that, be- 
fore the revelation to Moses, God had imparted 
supernatural communications to the sons of human- 
ity. Should the attempt be successful, it will ef- 
fectually demolish the major proposition in the 
primary syllogism of unbelief. Our purposed dem- 
onstration will rest, not on what infidelity de- 
nounces as the deceptive evidence of the Bible, but 
on those natural and fixed principles which entered 
into the original structure of man. Should our 
effort prevail, it will reach the fountain-head, 
whence the poisonous streams of skepticism have 
been flowing for so long a succession of centuries. 

That the generations of our race have not been 
of eternal continuance, is, perhaps, a self-evident 
truism. The supposition of a chain of infinite 
length, composed of finite links, without any start- 
ing-point to hang on, is an absurdity which sinks 
under its own downward gravitation. Nor was 
man's habitation from everlasting. This poor earth 
of ours, waxing old even in its youth, could ill have 
sustained the wear and convulsions of never-be- 



70 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



ginning ages. If the successive generations of men 
were from everlasting, how must the whole race 
have slept " to dumb forgetfulness a prey," during 
the countless centuries of the early Past ! How 
happens it that the flight of a by-gone eternity has 
reared no trophy to man's ethereal mind, save 
within the comparatively little speck of the last few 
thousand years ? 

The conclusion is inevitable, that man is not a 
self-existent being. He was brought into existence 
within the limits of time. The first progenitors of 
our race must have been constituted male and fe- 
male ; and we will suppose that they were created 
in the full maturity of their faculties, corporeal and 
intellectual. With the exact period of their forma- 
tion, and the particular country in which they were 
located, our argument has no immediate concern. 
Our present object is to prove that, whenever 
formed and wherever placed, they must, in their 
state of original inexperience, have speedily and 
miserably perished, carrying with them into ob- 
livion the hopes of their promised seed, unless they 
had be*en specially and preternaturally instructed 
from heaven. This special and preternatural in- 
struction had all the attributes of a divine revela- 
tion. 



ANTIQUITY OF REVELATION. 



71 



Our earliest ancestors were doubtless cast in the 
common mould of humanity, untainted, indeed, by 
original sin. In physical powers, corporeal and 
mental, they differed not from their descendants. 
The great Locke affirms that man comes into ex- 
istence without innate ideas, and that the mind is 
originally a sheet of white paper where experience, 
at her leisure, is to write her instructive lessons. 
His theory has been the subject of much criticism. 
But, perhaps, the difference between him and his 
critics consists in words rather than in substance. 
They contend that, as the acorn encloses in its 
small circumference the oak that may reign for 
centuries the monarch of the forest, so the mind, 
at its birth, contains within itself all the intellec- 
tual elements of the future man, waiting only oc- 
casions for their development. But they will not 
maintain that these elements can be developed 
without experience, any more than they would 
maintain that the acorn can be expanded into the 
oak without soil, moisture and heat. The theory 
of Locke and that of his learned opponents lead, 
therefore, to the same practical result. Without 
the teachings and culture of experience, or some 
miraculous instruction from above, the newly cre- 
ated mind must of necessity remain, on either 



72 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



theory, inert and helpless from its nativity to its 
dissolution. It is equally certain that man has not 
the instinct of the brute. God bestows upon his 
creatures only what their natures need. The en- 
dowments of his creating goodness, like the manna 
of the desert, are distributed with no prodigal pro- 
fusion. To man is not imparted the instinct of 
inferior animals, because man needs it not. 

In the brute creation instinct is the substitute 
for reason. Instinct has made the beaver a pro- 
ficient in architecture, and earned for the elephant 
the appellation of "half reasoning." God made 
man in his own image, and after his own likeness ; 
he breathed into him the breath of life from the 
fountain of his own vitality. With the intellectual 
image of the Almighty within him, the lord of the 
terrestrial creation needs not the instinct of his 
subject animals. To man it would be superfluous ; 
doubtless onerous. God bestows nothing in vain. 
The wastefulness of human prodigality can find 
no countenance in the example of the Highest. 
Reason is man's all-sufficient boon ; slight are the 
sprinklings of instinct perceptible in the human 
structure. 

Our primitive ancestors constituted, as their de- 
scendants are constituted, without the instinct of 



ANTIQUITY OF REVELATION. 



73 



the brute creation or innate ideas of competency 
to guide them, were, when first brought into exist- 
ence, but grown-up infants. Their maturity of 
body and of mind was bootless without the teach- 
ings derived from experience. A person kept in 
a solitary prison from birth to manhood, without 
ever beholding the light of the blessed sun, or see- 
ing the " human face divine," or hearing the sound 
of human voice, would, if suddenly emancipated 
from confinement and thrown upon his own un- 
disciplined resources, find himself intellectually 
helpless as the new-born babe. His physical 
powers would little avail him ; and, unless some 
pitying eye should find him and some helping hand 
be stretched forth for his relief, his dismayed and 
despairing spirit would speedily yearn after the 
water, the bread and the shelter of his dungeon 
home. 

Our first parents, on the day of their creation, 
were even more infantine in knowledge than the 
emancipated prisoner to whom we have just al- 
luded. The Bible affirms that God himself was 
their gracious Schoolmaster. Philosophy, if she 
rejects the scriptural account, is bound to suggest 
some other means that could have saved from 

swift destruction the inexperienced pair, cast un- 
4 



74 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

awares and without terrestrial guide upon a scene 
so new and strange. Unbelief, in all its hardihood, 
is challenged to intimate any expedient by which 
they could, without light from above, have sur- 
vived the first year of their miserable being. We 
invite the eye of sympathy to explore, painful as 
may be the task, the fearful evils which, without a 
heavenly teacher, must have environed those lone 
tenants of a wilderness world. 

The sun that first beheld the new-made ances- 
tors of human kind, would soon go down. And 
what, save some cheering intimation from heaven, 
could have saved from frenzy the derelict pair 
amidst the maddening horrors of that first night ? 
Hunger would not long delay its imperative calls. 
And how were the forsaken strangers to be res- 
cued from the jaws of famine ? The oracle of 
reason, mute in amazement, could yield no re- 
sponse. Experience is the only efficient purveyor 
for food. Feeble instinct might have conveyed to 
the mouth whatever substance the hand could 
grasp ; but neither the instinct of humanity, nor 
reason without practice, could distinguish the nu- 
tritious from the poisonous, or discerningly choose 
between the wholesome fruits of the tree and the 
wild grass of the field. Our primeval ancestors, 



ANTIQUITY OF REVELATION. 



75 



created to rule this lower world, must, without 
divine guidance, have perished from very hunger, 
whilst " the cattle upon a thousand hills" rioted in 
plenty. Thirst would interpose its fierce claims. 
But what kind prompting, save from above, could 
conduct to the cool spring or the pure stream ? 

Nature might have invited the outcasts to roam 
through her woods. But who was to forewarn 
against the deadly precipice, or the raging flood ? 
The naked wanderers would have exquisitely felt 
the alternations of heat and of cold. Yet how were 
they to learn the cool of the shade, or the warmth 
of raiment ? The foxes have holes, and the birds 
of the air nests, indicated by animal instincts. But 
for shelter against the pitiless storm and the wintry 
blasts, the inexperienced pair had no skill to con- 
struct the cabin or explore the cavern. Fire is 
needful for the preservation of life. But without 
instruction from heaven, how could the first fire 
have been lighted ? The breath of man could no 
more have enkindled the visible, than the vital 
spark. The production of flame by collision was a 
fortuitous discovery, requiring experience to ma- 
ture. Yet our pristine ancestors survived; and 
skepticism, to be consistent with itself, must needs 
attribute their escape from impendent perils — from 



76 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

death by fright or famine — by thirst or flood — by 
precipice or poison — by burning heat or freezing 
cold — not to the God who made them, but to the 
blind god of the atheist. In the theory of unbelief, 
chance was their sole preserver. 

The Bible indicates that speech was communi- 
cated to our first parents by the Almighty. Philos- 
ophy, if she rejects the Mosaic account, is bound 
to substitute a sounder exposition of the origin of 
language. The use of articulate sounds for the 
communication of thoughts is not taught by nature. 
The infant cries instinctively ; he instinctively ap- 
plies his mouth to the maternal fountain ; but he 
does not instinctively talk. To suppose that primi- 
tive and unaided man was the author of language, 
would imply a marvel stranger than that of the 
scriptural narrative. Why should it be thought 
incredible that, at the beginning, God distinguished 
the lord of this lower world from his subject brutes 
by miraculously teaching him the science of 
speech ? 

It is true that persons of different languages, cast 
upon a desert island, would learn to intercommu- 
nicate by signs, and ultimately, perhaps, by a rude 
dialect of their own formation. But they were 
conscious, when they met, that man had become a 



ANTIQUITY OF REVELATION. 



77 



speaking animal; each knew that the others, as 
well as himself, were familiar with the use of articu- 
late sounds ; they had but to apply a discovery, 
ancient and heaven-taught, to the exigency of their 
own case. The formation of a dialect, compounded 
from their mother tongues, would bear no affinity to 
the first creation of language. If the survivors of 
a fleet, stranded on some solitary coast, should 
from the wrecks around them, with the tools of 
marine architecture at hand, construct and rig out 
some rude craft for their escape, the achievement 
would sustain no comparison with the original in- 
vention of the sublime science of ship-building. 
And yet the science of ship-building bears to the 
primeval structure of language, a less proportion 
than the diminutive hillock bears to the majestic 
mountain. 

The foregoing premises demonstrate that God 
must have imparted supernatural communications to 
man in the very infancy of his existence. Had the 
communications related solely to the concerns of 
time, they would still have been divine revelations. 
It is not a necessary element of divine revelation, 
that it should pertain to the awful realities of eter- 
nity. Religion has been the usual, but not the 
exclusive subject of inspirations from heaven. The 



78 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

dream of the hardened Pharaoh was a divine reve- 
lation of the approaching famine. And yet famine 
is but a temporal dispensation. The Jewish code 
of civil jurisprudence was a divine revelation, 
equally with the ten commandments proclaimed 
from the quaking mount. The handwriting on the 
wall of the Chaldean palace was a divine revelation, 
though predicting only the tyrant's secular doom, 
and the extinction of the Babylonian dynasty. 

Nor was the divinity of the communications to 
our first parents affected by the manner in which 
they may have been imparted. The heavenly 
messages were divine revelations, whether con- 
veyed by the audible voice which afterwards 
thundered from Sinai, or by angel whispers, or in 
dreams and visions of the night. Peradventure 
God wrote his instructions to the infant adults with 
his own hand on the sheets of their inexperienced 
minds. Still the preternatural handwriting was a 
divine revelation. Perhaps the intellectual vacuum 
was supplied by a miraculous infusion of instinct. 
Still the instinctive lore, foreign to the limits of 
humanity, was a divine revelation. 

The footsteps of divine revelation to pristine man 
mark every line in the first chapter of the book of 
nature. The pure and clear eye of candor cannot 



ANTIQUITY OF REVELATION. 



79 



fail to perceive them there. And observe well the 
accordance between that book and the book of 
avowed Inspiration. The first chapters of the 
Sacred Volume proclaim the divine revelations, for 
temporal objects, made to our primeval ancestors 
in the very morn of their being ; the proclamation 
had been anticipated in nature's still earlier volume. 
The accordance between the Book of Scripture 
and the book of nature, establishes the truth of 
both. The preternatural communications recorded 
in nature's register, are the first link in that stu- 
pendous chain of revelations which terminated not 
until the close of the Apocalypse. Proof that the 
first link of the chain was wrought by heaven, is 
" confirmation strong" that the workmanship of its 
other links is also divine. 

The sublunary wants of the world's master, so 
miraculously supplied, bore no greater proportion 
to what sin made his spiritual wants, than time 
bears to eternity. When God looked down from 
heaven on the early descendants of the original 
pair, he beheld them immerged in ignorance, crime 
and idolatry. Then came a deluge, of which earth 
will carry to her grave indelible marks. But all 
the waters of the flood could not wash from our 
sphere the pollutions of sin. In due time the ex- 



80 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

periment of civilization was tried. Science eleva- 
ted the mind, but purified not the heart. Apostate 
man could not " by searching find out God." The 
fallen race were conscious, indeed, of hostility to 
their Creator; but, when asked to indicate the 
way of reconciliation, reason's boasted oracle was 
speechless. Man felt the divinity stirring within 
him ; but whether his ethereal spirit was to perish 
with its sister clay, or survive " the wreck of mat- 
ter and the crush of worlds," was a problem insolv- 
able by humanity. No exertion of mortal intellect 
could bring " life and immortality to light." 

For thousands of years the aching and bewil- 
dered soul was lifting up its piercing and frantic 
cries to heaven for illumination and help. The 
whole creation groaned and travailed in pain to- 
gether.* Yet did the fallen creature, in his lowest 
estate, bear marks, " like archangel ruined," of his 
pristine grandeur. That Jehovah should have pro- 
vided by special revelation for his original physical 
wants, and yet make no provision for his subsequent 
spiritual necessities, intense as they were, is a sup- 
position opposed to that reason which infidelity 
idolatrously worships as a goddess, and derogatory, 



* Romans viil 22. 



ANTIQUITY OF REVELATION. 



81 



we speak it with reverence, to the infinite goodness 
of Him who has arrayed the lilies of the field, and 
provided food for the young ravens. The primeval 
revelation from heaven registered in the book of 
nature, was the first act of a series ; it was the sure 
precursor of more glorious revelations to come. 
The grand drama of God, exhibited to an astonished 
universe, would lose its completeness by subtracting, 
as uninspired, a single line from the Old Testament 
or the New. Man's miraculous preservation in his 
pristine state was the visible commencement of the 
divine drama ; its sublime consummation was de- 
veloped by the miracle of his redemption. 

Nor must the general belief of the pagan world 
before the birth of Jesus Christ, that moral light 
was about to dawn from above, be passed over in 
silence. Socrates, sometimes called the almost 
christian, deplored in his dying hour his want of 
spiritual vision, and encouraged Plato and his other 
weeping disciples to expect in patience a revelation 
from heaven. The heathen Suetonius declares ; " It 
was an ancient and constant opinion, and founded 
upon the knowledge of some divine decree, that a 
person or persons would appear in Judea, who 
should obtain the government of the world." Taci- 
tus observes ; " It was the persuasion of most an- 
4* 



82 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



cient persons, that the olden books of the priests 
contained passages which implied that the East 
would become powerful, and that there would arise 
in Judea those w T ho should achieve universal em- 
pire." It is manifest that Virgil, in his fourth 
eclogue, had some glimpses of " the day's spring 
from on high." These cherished hopes might have 
been suggested by the inspired oracles of the Jews ; 
but the suggestions found a ready and deep re- 
sponse from the smothered divinity breathed by the 
Almighty into the human breast. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 

Works of God and of man distinguishable by inspection — Whether 
God or man made Gospel is determinable by its internal evi- 
dence — Moral attributes of God not discoverable by reason — Yet 
reason perceives divine truthfulness of their delineation in Gos- 
pel — Style of Bible — Atonement beyond mortal contrivance — 
Yet when revealed, reason must recognize it the work of God — 
The Trinity — A mystery too profound and startling for impostors 
to have incorporated into work of fiction. 

There is a contrast between the works of God 
and the works of man, which plainly distinguishes 
the divine from the human. Raise your medita- 
tion to the system above us, with its central sun, 
and wheeling orbs. How symmetrical! How 
simple ! How majestic ! How changeless ! How 
adapted in all its variegated parts to the perfection 
of its stupendous whole ! Then sink your con- 
templation to the proudest work of man. How 
diminutive ! How imperfect ! How indicative of 
the little shifts of artifice ! How prone to derange- 
ment, to the vicissitudes of change, and to the de- 
crepitude of age! Each aspect of the visible 
heavens bears on its face the impress of divinity. 



84 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

Nor are the sublunary works of God less distin- 
guishable from the works of his creature. It re- 
quires no elaborate study to discover that the 
house is the production of mortal hands, and that 
the Architect of the mountains is He who hath 
weighed them "in scales, and the hills in a bal- 
ance." The bridge that spans the stream is pal- 
pably of human structure; the flowing stream 
below proclaims the workmanship of Him who 
makes " rivers in the desert." Earth's petty mas- 
ter claims as his own the curiously-wrought watch ; 
but the observer perceives at a glance that it is the 
pencil of the Almighty which paints the lilies of 
the field. God imitates not the works of mortals ; 
nor can the barrier between the human and the 
divine be passed by the brother of the worm. To 
the authorship of the meanest production of om- 
nipotent power mortality dare not lay claim ; nor 
will the loftiest production of manhood rashly con- 
tend for heavenly origin. 

What God has made and what man has made, is 
a question of great simplicity and easy solution ; it 
requires not the invocation of extraneous proofs ; 
it is tested by its internal evidence. To this rule, 
boundless as the realms of nature and of art, can 
it be that the Gospel is a lonely exception ? Is it 



THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 85 

the only thing that does not demonstrate its own 
paternity ? Of all the works of God and of man, is 
it the isolated production whose authorship cannot 
be ascertained by inspection ? We deny that the 
Gospel presents such a strange anomaly in the vis- 
ible universe. Its diligent, honest and candid ex- 
plorer can no more doubt its divine origin than the 
astronomer can doubt that the worlds are the crea- 
tions of Jehovah. 

In addressing his heavenly Father the psalmist 
piously exclaimed, " Thou hast magnified thy word 
above all thy name."* If this exclamation be true, 
the divine hand must be deeply engraved upon the 
holy pages. God has magnified his Word above 
his other works by specially impressing upon it the 
image of himself. Historic corroborations are sat- 
isfactory and useful to the investigation of the 
christian evidences. Yet they form but the out- 
works of Sacred Truth. The glorious Citadel of 
Salvation rests its claim to divinity chiefly on the 
symmetry, the beauty, the purity, the strength, the 
unearthly majesty of its own proportions. The 
Gospel is itself its best Advocate. 

In canvassing the internal evidences of the 



* Psalm cxxxviii. 2. 



86 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



christian religion, the first theme that presents it- 
self is its sublime theology. The theology of the 
Gospel comprises the being and attributes of God, 
the redemption of the world by the vicarious suf- 
ferings of Jesus Christ, and the personality and 
agencies of the Holy Ghost. 

The Bible represents its God as a Being eter- 
nally self-existent, uniting in himself almightiness, 
omnipresence, omniscience, immutability, inflexible 
truth, infinite holiness, infinite justice, and infinite 
love. This assemblage of perfections is unques- 
tionably the most stupendous exhibition ever pre- 
sented to human view. Yet impartial reason must 
perceive and admit the fidelity of the sublime pic- 
ture. Even infidelity is obliged to confess that the 
Jehovah of the Bible is just such a Deity as the 
universe required for its creation, preservation and 
government. Unbelief, unless sunk to the grade 
of atheism, will not venture to deny that the Scrip- 
tures have faithfully delineated the true and only 
God of nature. In the august representation there 
is nothing to subtract, nothing to add, nothing to 
amend. 

The scriptural delineation of God was not drawn 
by mortal pencil. Reason may recognize truths 
when presented to her contemplation, which she 



THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 



87 



would never have originated by her own unaided 
efforts. A ploughman may credit the marvels of 
astronomy, which it required the genius of a New- 
ton to bring to light. It would be foreign to our 
purpose to inquire whether, if man had remained 
in his primitive state of holiness, he would of him- 
self have discovered the perfections of his Creator 
in their glorious amplitude. Man did not remain 
in his primitive state of holiness. He fell : and sin 
miserably dimmed his spiritual vision. By the 
apostasy his heart became darkened. There is a 
moral, as well as a physical imbecility of the intel- 
lect. Almost six thousand years have elapsed 
since the creation, and fallen man has never soared 
to a just conception of the true God, except where 
inspiration has shed its beams. To show the ca- 
pacity of reason for advancement in the science of 
theism, infidelity has vauntingly pointed to the 
early Bramins of India, to the Confucius of China, 
to the Zoroaster of Persia, and to the Socrates and 
Plato of classic Greece. But these sages made 
little progress in the science of theological truth ; 
and what little they learned was chiefly derived 
from the divine fountain opened by early rev- 
elation. 

Reason may, by its own efforts, trace effects to 



88 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



their cause, and thus infer the existence of Him 
who framed the worlds. It may furthermore con- 
clude that the Creator and Governor of the uni- 
verse must be almighty and omniscient. But 
should fallen man, without the lamp of Scripture, 
attempt to explore what are termed the moral at- 
tributes of the Deity, he must wander and be lost 
in utter darkness. What, for instance, could a 
sinful being know of the holiness of God ? When 
seen in the scriptural mirror, it constitutes one of 
the chief of Jehovah's attributes. Next to redeem- 
ing love, it is perhaps the most stirring theme in 
the anthem of the skies ; and the uplifted eye of 
terrestrial devotion ever gazes with wonder and 
delight on the holiness of Him who " sitteth upon 
the throne." But of " the beauty of holiness," car- 
nal wisdom could learn nothing from communing 
with herself. Without the vocabulary of the Bible, 
she must have remained ignorant even of the 
meaning of the terms. Yet, when the volume of 
Inspiration reiterates the hallelujah of heaven, 
" Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts," reason 
must needs yield her concurring, though perhaps 
reluctant response. With the Bible before her, 
she must perforce admit that holiness is essential 
to happiness ; that without holiness, heaven would 



THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 



S9 



be heaven no more ; that a God divested of infinite 
holiness would cease to be a God of infinite beati- 
tude ; that an unholy sovereign of the universe 
would fill created intelligences with consternation 
and despair. 

Infinite justice and infinite love are also perfec- 
tions of Him who " inhabiteth eternity." And 
these are attributes with which the destiny of mor- 
tals is more especially connected. Yet fallen man 
could not have discovered them by the light of na- 
ture. Aside from the Bible, reason knows nothing 
of the attributes of God, except from their display in 
this lower world. She can argue of things in- 
visible only from things that are seen. She holds 
no converse with the inhabitants of other spheres. 
Into the annals of eternity she cannot peer, without 
the aid of the Gospel. Limiting her views to this 
poor world, reason must hesitate in her conclusion, 
that its Governor is a being of never-sleeping jus- 
tice. In his distribution of rewards and punish- 
ments, he takes not counsel of her. With the 
thunderbolt in his right hand, he has stood by in 
seeming indifference, while might has been tramp- 
ling on right ever since the days of Eden. Though 
not a sparrow falleth to the ground without his 
notice, the great historic tragedy of injustice, crime, 



90 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



and woe has been recklessly enacted in the face 
of heaven, without let or hindrance, for near six 
thousand years. 

Nor could reason, with vision confined to earth, 
infer more favorably of the infinite love of Jehovah. 
Her native incredulity must prompt inquiries be- 
yond her power to solve. If " God is love," why 
has he not caused this orb, made by his hands, and 
governed by his power, to remain, as it was in the be- 
ginning, " the garden of the Lord ?" Whence come 
frightful and destroying earthquakes ? Whence 
volcanic outbreaks, burying towns and cities in a 
fiery deluge ? War, famine, and pestilence — are 
they not his willing slaves ? And why are these 
ministers of vengeance so often sent forth to deso- 
late the earth, if indeed " God is love ?" 

Eternity is the only clue to the labyrinth of time. 
That clue is beyond the grasp of uninspired reason. 
She has no syllogism in her ample storehouse, by 
which to prove the existence of a world beyond the 
grave. The renowned philosophers of classic 
Greece could not by searching find out 

" The undiscovered country from whose bourn 
No traveller returns." 

Even the magnificent intellect of the Roman Tully, 



THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 



91 



so " rich with the spoils of time," was obliged to 
confess its inability to decide whether the immor- 
tality of the soul was a pleasing dream or a glorious 
reality. Before inspiration dawned, man had, in 
every age, and every clime, sought, as for his life, 
but sought in vain, to discover whether the grave 
is not the place of eternal sleep. His signal failure, 
so universal and long continued, even when aided 
by the lights of boasted science, demonstrates that 
the human intellect is not competent of itself to 
ascertain its own eternity. But when the Gospel 
superadded her voice to the deep whisperings of 
nature, the candid mind could not distrust the 
united proofs that the soul is to live forever. 

It is only by the light of eternity that we can 
decipher and "justify the ways of God to man." 
The day of judgment is the true expositor of the 
mysteries of the divine government below. With- 
out the comment of that august day, the exhibitions 
in this province of the general empire would but 
dimly portray the moral attributes of Jehovah. 
Unless the retributions beyond the grave had been 
palpable to the vision of the sacred writers, they 
would scarcely have ventured to predicate of the 
Ruler of the universe infinite justice and infinite 
love. If the authors of the Gospel were but the 



92 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



fabricators of a fiction, why should they have en- 
cumbered it with a gratuitous averment, perhaps in 
seeming collision with the demonstrations of earth ? 
It was the potency of truth shed abroad in their 
hearts by illumination from above, which com- 
pelled them to affirm that the justice and love of 
God are as infinite as his omniscience or almighti- 
ness. And even unregenerate reason must recog- 
nize and feel the reality of this sublime truth, if with 
meekness and candor she will lift her wondering 
eyes from time to eternity. 

The very style of the Bible, when it portrays the 
attributes of Jehovah, assumes a magnificence and 
grandeur above the reach of mortality. As the 
sacred writers approach the awful theme, its divine 
majesty imparts an unearthly majesty to their dic- 
tion ; the shepherds and fishermen of Judea rise to 
an elevation of language never attained by the 
loftiest genius of classic antiquity. Homer is justly 
esteemed the first of heathen authors, and the de- 
lineation of the mythological gods always invoked 
his highest powers. His nod of Jove was vaunting- 
ly indicated by the pagan world as its grandest 
specimen of the sublime. The Athenian Phidias 
selected the passage as the subject of his matchless 
statue, in which he sought to embody the fabled 



THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 93 

god of gods. The memorable passage is thus trans- 
lated by Pope : 

" He spoke, and awful bends his sable brows ; 
Shakes his ambrosial curls, and gives the nod, 
The stamp of fate, and sanction of the god ; 
High heaven with trembling the dread signal took, 
And all Olympus to the centre shook." 

With this boasted effusion of mythological sub- 
limity, compare the following extracts from Job, 
the Psalms, Isaiah, and Habakkuk. We have 
placed the extracts in juxtaposition, that their col- 
lective and overpowering grandeur may the more 
readily appear. 

" He removeth the mountains, and they know 
not ; he overturneth them in his anger ; he shaketh 
the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof 
tremble ; he commandeth the sun, and it riseth not, 
and sealeth up the stars ; he alone spreadeth out 
the heavens and treadeth upon the waves of the 
sea."* " Hell is naked before him, and destruction 
hath no covering ; he stretcheth out the north over 
the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon 
nothing; he bindeth up the waters in his thick 
clouds, and the cloud is not rent under them."f 



* Job ix. 4 to 12. 



f Job xxvi. 6, 1, 8. 



94 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

" In my distress, I called unto the Lord, and cried 
unto my God. He heard my voice out of his 
temple, and my cry came before him even into his 
ears. Then the earth shook and trembled, the 
foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken 
because he was wroth. There went up a smoke 
out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth de- 
voured ; coals were kindled by it. He bowed the 
heavens also and came down, and darkness was 
under his feet. And he rode upon a cherub and did 
fly, yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. 
He made darkness his secret place ; his pavilion 
round about him were dark waters and thick clouds 
of the sky." # " O Lord my God, thou art very 
great, thou art clothed with honor and majesty; 
who coverest thyself with light as with a garment, 
who stretcheth out the heavens like a curtain ; who 
layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters, 
who maketh the clouds his chariot, who walketh 
upon the wings of the wind ; who maketh his angels 
spirits, his ministers a flaming fire ; who laid the 
foundations of the earth that it should not be re- 
moved forever. Thou coverest it with the deep' 
as with a garment; the waters stood above the 



* Psalms xviii. 6 to 12. 



THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 



95 



mountains. At thy rebuke they fled, at the voice 
of thy thunder they hasted away."* "Who hath 
measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and 
meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended 
the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed 
the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance ? 
Behold the nations are as a drop of the bucket, and 
are counted as the small dust of the balance ; behold 
he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. It is 
he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and 
the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that 
stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and 
spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in."f " He 
stood and measured the earth ; he beheld and drove 
asunder the nations ; and the everlasting mountains 
were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow ; his 
ways are everlasting. Was the Lord displeased 
against the rivers, was thine anger against the 
rivers, was thy wrath against the sea, that thou didst 
ride upon thine horses and thy chariots of salva- 
tion ? The mountains saw thee and they trembled, 
the overflowing of the water passed by ; the deep 
uttered his voice and lifted up his hands on high. "J 



* Psalms civ. 1 to 8. f Isaiah ad. 12, 15, 22. 

% Habakkuk iii. 6, 8, 10. 



96 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



Our selection of these passages from the Jewish 
Scriptures ought not to be regarded as a deviation 
from the direct line of our argument. The union 
between the Old Testament and the New is indis- 
soluble ; and any internal proof of the inspiration of 
" The Law and the Prophets," tends to confirm the 
internal evidences of the inspiration of the Gospel. 

The redemption of the world by the vicarious 
sufferings of Jesus Christ, is a vital element of Gos- 
pel theology. The incarnation of the second per- 
son of the Trinity is, doubtless, the greatest prod- 
igy the universe ever beheld. Compared with this 
wonder of wonders, the other miracles recorded in 
the Gospel, such as the healing of the sick, the 
control of the angry elements, and the resurrection 
of the dead, lose their resplendence, as " the stars 
hide their diminished heads" in the presence of the 
sun. It is not to be disguised that the immolation 
of an incarnate God for human sin was an event 
well calculated to awaken the incredulity of the 
natural heart. We need not be greatly surprised 
that it appeared " unto the Jews a stumbling-block, 
and unto the Greeks foolishness." Its seeming 
impossibility has been the stronghold of infidelity 
for eighteen centuries. And there are twilight 
moments when even the faith of the pious chris- 



THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 



97 



tian is ready to falter and to faint, as he attempts to 
grasp the stupendous thought of having been pur- 
chased by the blood of God. 

The astounding tale of the descent, incarnation, 
sufferings and death of the coeternal and coequal 
Son of the Highest, would not have been admitted 
into a work of fiction, fabricated by adroit impos- 
tors, and wearing the name of truth. If the Gos- 
pel is a fable, the attribute of matchless skill must 
be freely awarded to its authors. If it is not the 
inspiration of God, it looks down from its "bad 
eminence" of deceit and hypocrisy, as from a 
mountain height, upon all the other efforts of the 
human mind. It is almost equally miraculous, 
whether viewed as a divine or as a mortal produc- 
tion. Hell is not too deep, nor heaven too high, 
nor earth too broad for its grasp. It scans time as 
a speck in its horizon, and is familiarly at home in 
the bosom of eternity. With an unfaltering hand 
it delineates the attributes of " the unknown God," 
and the picture bears on its face the indelible 
stamp of verity. It dissects the moral anatomy of 
our being, as its material structure was never laid 
open by the scientific knife. " Know thyself," 
was an abstract proverb of Grecian wisdom. " Ex- 
amine yourselves," is a mandate of the Gospel, not 

5 



98 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

left by her as a cold abstraction. She holds up to 
man a glass in which are presented his spiritual 
form and features, large and true as life. In the 
mirror of the Gospel he may study the secrets of 
his own nature better than in the multitudinous 
libraries of classic learning. 

If the Gospel is a fable, the great artificers who 
fabricated it must have been profoundly intimate 
with the principles of our common being, and with 
the long-established laws of fiction. They well 
knew that verisimilitude is vitally essential to such 
fictitious writings as would assume the passport of 
truth, and that, to gain even a temporary mastery 
over the pride of intellect, falsehood must needs 
dissever itself from improbability. Even the po- 
etic muse, with all her license and all her witchery, 
must, to maintain her sway when she gives "to 
airy nothing a local habitation and a name," array 
her fairy thoughts in the counterfeited semblance 
of truth. Would she dally with the understanding, 
and for awhile beguile its faith, she must not insult 
it with wanton infractions of common-place prob- 
ability. If the writers of the Gospel had sought to 
be the authors of a theological romance, they need 
not have startled the native skepticism of the hu- 
man heart by calling down a God from his throne. 



THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 



99 



It was not necessary for the success of the romance, 
that its hero should be the second person of the 
Trinity. A perfect man, or an angel exalted as 
far above Gabriel as he is above mortality, might 
have been presented as the preacher and pattern 
of a loftier faith and purer code of ethics than time 
had before known. Thus modified, the spiritual 
fable might have been accommodated by its match- 
less authors to the prejudices of the Jews and to 
the pride of the gentiles. The phantom bark might 
have been sent along the flood of time, impelled by 
the favoring breezes of human passion, and the 
current, deep and strong, of the carnal heart. 

It was not the caprice of man, but the almighti- 
ness of truth, which imparted to the scriptural 
scheme of redemption the seemingly incredible 
mystery of its vicarious sacrifice. Had the Gos- 
pel been a fiction, it would not have been made to 
rest on the miraculous conception of the Son of 
God, his manger-birth, his servile toil, his abject 
poverty, his bloody sweat, his voluntary submis- 
sion to scoffings, scourgings, spittings, and igno- 
minious crucifixion. Borne down by such apparent 
impossibilities, fiction must have sunk under its 
own weight, as the stone sinks in the waves, unless 
sustained by a succession of corroborative miracles. 



100 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



And its authors could not have imagined that the 
God of truth would suspend or vary the fixed laws 
of His empire to authenticate a cunningly-devised 
fable. Yet the Gospel confidently predicted its 
speedy and wide diffusion. Had twice ten years 
rolled away without a multiplication of proselytes, 
it must have fallen a victim to its own falsified pre- 
dictions, and overwhelmed its fabricators with the 
contempt and vengeance of an insulted and infuri- 
ated world. The authors of the Gospel were either 
inspired or mad. Its very improbabilities confirm 
its truth. 

Heathen mythology represented, indeed, that its 
fabled gods sometimes assumed the form and habi- 
tations of men. But such transformations had not 
self-immolation for their object. Classic fable 
never pretended that any of her deities descended 
to earth and borrowed the garb of humanity, merely 
to suffer and to die. The crucifixion of the " Lord of 
glory" was an original conception of the Bible. 
Should the legendary lore of the olden time have 
intimated that the Olympic Jove, or the Hindoo 
Vishnu, had arrayed himself in flesh, and lived, and 
suffered, and died, as the Gospel affirms that its in- 
carnate Jehovah lived and suffered and died, the 
conceit would have been held too extravagant for 



THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 101 



the indulgent faith of pagan Greece, or even for the 
passive credulity of oriental climes. 

But although the incarnation of the uncreated 
Son would not have been devised for a fiction 
claiming to be true, and intended for general diffu- 
sion and belief, yet if reason will study the sacred 
theme by the scriptural lamp, with the diligence, 
fidelity and candor bestowed upon the sciences of 
earth, she must perceive in the Gospel scheme of 
salvation " the power of God and the wisdom of 
God." Enlightened by the rays of the " Sun of 
righteousness," she cannot withhold her credence 
to the tremendous truths that God is infinitely holy 
and just, as well as infinitely merciful ; that the 
human race, with souls immortal, are at enmity 
with their Creator; and that such enmity, if con- 
tinued, must inevitably draw upon them eternal 
perdition. Then how could infinite love receive 
into its bosom sinful and polluted creatures without 
staining the purity of infinite holiness and infinite 
justice ? This is a problem which earth could 
never have solved ; but earth, divested of her prej- 
udice and pride, may see and admire the wisdom 
of the heavenly solution. 

That God could not forgive iniquity without ade- 
quate satisfaction, is a scriptural truism which 



102 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

reason might, perhaps, have inferred from the light 
of nature. The capricious pardon of offences 
would shake the pillars even of earthly jurispru- 
dence. How much less compatible would it be 
with the unchangeable jurisprudence of heaven! 
Suffering is the appropriate penalty of sin. If 
offenders are to be delivered from the penalty, their 
deliverance can only be effected by the vicarious 
suffering of a sinless substitute. But where was to 
be found a sinless substitute of adequate dignity to 
atone for the iniquities of a world ? The vicarious 
sufferings of an insect of the field, and the vicarious 
sufferings of legions of archangels would have been 
alike inefficacious. Nothing but the expiatory 
agonies of an incarnate God could have satisfied the 
awful justice of an offended God. Love prevailed, 
known only in the pavilion of the Trinity. Its 
second glorious person made himself the voluntary 
substitute for transgressors. Man had rebelled, 
and God forgave. On Calvary was displayed the 
resplendent rainbow of divine perfections, blending 
in ineffable harmony infinite justice, infinite wisdom, 
and infinite love. On this phenomenon of the uni- 
verse, "new and strange," in the flight of never- 
beginning ages, the hierarchies of heaven will ever 
gaze with holy curiosity, wonder, and delight. 



THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 



103 



Uninspired reason would never have soared on 
its own wings to the mighty thought of the incar- 
nation and sufferings of the Creator of the worlds. 
In exploring the human heart, it could have found 
there no pulsation prompting the conception of that 
love which brought down to earth the Son of 
God to die for his enemies the death foreshadowed 
by the bloody sweat of Gethsemane. Reason must, 
indeed, admire the salvation proclaimed in the 
Gospel, as the astronomer admires the spangled 
heavens ; but reason could no more have con- 
trived that salvation than the astronomer could 
have formed a star. 

The personality and agencies of the Holy Ghost 
constitute the third department of evangelical 
theology. The union of three divine persons in 
one God, each entitled to the adoration of the uni- 
verse — each self-existent, eternal, omnipresent, om- 
niscient — is the most incomprehensible doctrine of 
our holy religion. Though to the believer un- 
speakably precious, this primary article of evangel- 
ical truth has ever been to reasoning pride " a rock 
of offence." Unitarianism was from the beginning 
the besetting heresy of Christendom ; and it threat- 
ened for centuries to swallow up the true faith. 
Aware of the repugnance of the human mind to 



104 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

give credence to what it cannot comprehend, the 
Arabian deceiver, though he professed belief in the 
inspiration of the Bible, repudiated the doctrine of 
the Trinity, and thus facilitated the triumphs of the 
Koran over kingdoms and continents. Had the 
Gospel been a fable, its fabricators would not have 
made the plurality of the persons of the Godhead a 
prominent article of their creed. It was the inspi- 
ration of heaven, and not the craft of earth, that 
announced the existence, and commanded the equal 
and undivided worship of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost, One in Three, and 
Three in One. The startling mystery would have 
been eschewed by the cunning of adroit impostors, 
combined to give wide currency to a fiction which 
arrogated the character of truth. The agencies of 
the Holy Spirit, in the work of redemption, will 
constitute the subject of a future and distinct 
chapter. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 

Gospel system of ethics like solar system in fewness and simplicity 
of its principles — Consists in love to God and love to man — Reg- 
ulates thoughts and intents of heart — Disclaims heroic virtues — 
Places humility in front rank of its graces — Has chivalry of its 
own — Paul and Julius Csesar contrasted — Other evangelical graces 
— Forgiveness of injuries — Universal beneficence — Victory over 
world — Sanctions of Gospel. 

There is a striking analogy in their simplicity 
and grandeur, between the moral and the physical 
works of the Creator. How symmetrical, how ma- 
jestic, are the movements of the planetary spheres ! 
And yet they are impelled and governed by two 
very simple principles ; the discursive, technically 
called the centrifugal force, and the attraction of 
gravitation ; the former urging them onward into 
the regions of space, and the latter causing them to 
revolve harmoniously round the central sun. Prin- 
ciples equally limited in number, still more simple 
in character, and intelligible as daylight to the in- 
tellect of early childhood, form the ruling elements 
of the Gospel system. " Thou shalt love the Lord 

thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, 
5* 



106 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

and with all thy mind. This is the first and great 
commandment. And the second is like unto it ; 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these 
two commandments hang all the law and the 
prophets."* 

Thus did Jesus Christ declare that love to God 
and love to man were the two constituents, potent 
yet simple, of his divine system ; the love to man 
being its discursive force, and the love to God its 
gravitating power ; the former expanding the soul 
into general philanthropy, the latter drawing it 
home to the central Sun of righteousness. Had not 
" sin marred all," the love to God and the love to 
man would have preserved the same sublime har- 
mony in the moral system that the propelling and 
the attractive forces have produced in the physical. 
But sin was a malign comet, loosened from its 
orbit, and carrying in its lawless track dismay and 
destruction. 

The obligation of supreme affection to the Crea- 
tor and Governor of the universe was developed by 
the Gospel and her Jewish predecessor. It lay not 
within the ken of the uninspired intellect. Fallen 
reason could no more have discovered it in all its 



* Matthew xxii. Si, 38, 39. 



THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 107 

bearings, than the naked eye could have discovered 
the existence and energies of physical gravitation. 
The material telescope was necessary for the one 
discovery ; the scriptural telescope for the other. 
The light of depraved nature failed to ascertain the 
perfections of the true God. How then could it 
have ascertained the obligation of the creature to 
love him with all the heart, and with all the soul, 
and with all the mind ? The very multifariousness 
of the heathen divinities precluded the possibility 
of concentrated affection for any one of them. 
Athens recognized thirty thousand false deities* 
Hence the prevalent saying that, in the city of 
Minerva, it was easier to find a god than a man. 
The saying might have been of Egyptian origin ; 
but it found a congenial domicil in classic Greece. 

Yet since Revelation has unfolded the being and 
perfections of the true God, even fallen reason must 
perceive and admit the obligation of loving him 
with supreme devotion. The Creator justly claims 
the homage of his rational creatures ; and the in- 
terchange of love between him and the intellectual 
emanations of himself is the silken cord, stronger 
than chain of iron, which should bind together the 
diversified ranks of spiritual being. There is a 
transforming power in love. Even love to the 



108 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



creature assimilates us to the object beloved. Love 
to God restores to the renovated soul the image 
and likeness of its Creator, which sin had defaced. 
If the philosopher or patriot would elevate to its 
true standard the dignity of human nature, let him 
press home the obligation of the first and great 
commandment of the Gospel. Love to God is the 
food on which angels feed ; and if it universally be- 
came the spiritual aliment of earth, it would trans- 
mute mortals into the similitude of the cherubim 
and seraphim. 

" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," was 
a mandate promulgated by the Gospel. It was 
unknown to the heathen world. Before the great 
moral Luminary appeared above the horizon, self 
was the ruling god of this world. Poetry decked 
with her own never-fading wreaths the brow of the 
idol. The immortal heroes of the Grecian and Ro- 
man epic were just as selfish as was the Stygian 
hero of Milton's Paradise Lost. Even history has 
condescended to hide the idol's deformity under 
dazzling appellations. It was selfishness that 
moved Alexander to conquer the world, and then 
to weep that he had not another world to conquer 
It was not to save his country, but to serve himself, 
that Caesar passed the Rubicon. Yet has history 



THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 109 



baptized the ambition of conquerors with the name 
of heroism ! It is a baptism of blood. 

The Gospel held no dalliance with idolatry in 
any of its modifications. It commanded selfishness 
to pluck out its right eye, to cut off its right hand. 
It said to the ruling god of this world, " Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself.'*' It interdicted not a 
moderated self-love. On the contrary, it declared, 
" if any provide not for his own" he " is worse than 
an infidel." But it required that love of self and 
love of human kind should be regulated by the 
same just standard. Selfishness is but the syno- 
nyme of sin. For its own gratification it would 
scatter through the universe " fire-brands, arrows, 
and death," and in the midst of the ruins would cry, 
" Am I not in sport ?" It once attempted to de- 
molish the eternal throne. Satan was the father, 
and is the mirror of selfishness. Let the idolaters 
of self contemplate his hideous lineaments, and be- 
hold themselves as in a glass. 

The name of selfishness survives in heaven only 
as a beacon to check the incipient movements of 
forbidden desire. Angels love their fellows as 
themselves ; and so should mortals love their neigh- 
bors. And the evangelical meaning of the term 
neighbor embraces the whole human family. 



110 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

Should all of terrestrial birth yield cordial allegiance 
to the second, as well as to the first great command- 
ment of the Gospel — should selfishness in all its 
forms be dragged forth from its hiding-places and 
sacrificed upon the altar of universal philanthropy, 
what a change would pass over the moral aspect 
of our world ! The clangor of war would be 
hushed ; the breath of slander ride no longer " on 
the posting winds ;" the descendants of the primi- 
tive pair would become brethren in affection as 
well as in lineage ; and earth would bloom again 
into its original Eden. 

The two great commandments of the Gospel 
are " like unto" each other ; their similitude is af- 
firmed by their divine Author. Love is their 
common lever; it is the impulsive principle by 
which the Gospel moves the world. Even religion 
is nothing without love. Though it has the gift of 
prophecy, and understands all mysteries and all 
knowledge, and has faith so that it could remove 
mountains ; though it bestows all its goods to feed 
the poor, and gives its body to be burned; yet, 
without love, it is " as sounding brass or a tinkling 
cymbal." Love is the soul of the universe. God 
is Love and Love is God. It was Love that form- 
ed the worlds and* peopled them with intelligent 



THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. Ill 

beings capable of worshipping and serving their 
Creator. When man had fallen, it was Love that 
achieved his redemption; it was Love that sweated 
forth blood in the garden ; it was Love that hung 
suspended, a voluntary victim, upon the cross. 

In his palmy state of primeval innocence, man 
was love. Made in the image and after the like- 
ness of his Creator, love was the controlling element 
of his nature. As God is love in infinitude, man 
was love in miniature. But the poison of sin 
transmuted into idolatrous selfishness his originally 
pure and expansive affections. It was the benign 
object of the Gospel to restore the predominance 
of holy love in the human bosom. Hence its two 
great commandments, comprising within their am- 
ple purview the whole compass of mortal duties. 
In love to God and love to man consists the entire 
system of evangelical ethics. 

The Gospel's mighty lever is original and unique. 
Equally original and unique is the locality of its 
influences. Civil legislation aims only at the outer 
man. It aspires not to cleanse the turbid fountain 
within. The legislation of Jesus Christ grapples 
with the heart. It regulates " the thoughts and 
intents." It was the heart that the fall contami- 
nated ; it is the heart that the Gospel seeks to cure. 



112 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

Jesus Christ " knew what was in man ;" He was 
profoundly skilled in the spiritual anatomy of the 
being made by his own hands ; He well under- 
stood that the heart holds the same central position 
in our moral system as in our physical; that in both 
it is the spring of action — the citadel of life. He 
declared, " Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, 
murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false wit- 
ness, blasphemies : these are the things which de- 
file a man."* And of external sanctity, covering 
spiritual corruption, He affirmed that it was "like 
unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beau- 
tiful outward, but are within full of dead men's 
bones and of all uncleanness."f 

The morality of the Gospel is a new edition of 
the law of Sinai, revised, interpreted, and expanded 
by its author. " Thou shalt not commit adultery," 
was thundered forth from the quaking mount. 
The Gospel brought home to the very citadel of 
life Sinai's awful mandate, " Whosoever looketh 
upon a woman to lust after her, hath committed 
adultery with her already in his heart." From the 
great fountain of the heart, poisoned by sin, flow 
all the impure torrents and rivulets of human ac- 



* Matthew xv. 19, 20. 



f Matthew xxiii. 27. 



THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 113 

tion and thought. Into this reservoir of pollution 
the Gospel casts its healing medicines. The om- 
niscient Physician never forgot that the purification 
of the fountain was the only appropriate means of 
purifying the streams. 

Frigid will ever be that system of morality, 
which 

" Plays round the head but comes not to the heart." 

Necessarily cold and inefficient must be a code of 
ethical abstractions deriving no warmth from the 
affections. Holy love, shed abroad in the soul, can 
alone secure the faithful performance of all the 
social and religious duties. The moral lever of 
the Gospel fails not, like the lever of Archimedes, 
for want of a place whereon to stand. It is self- 
poised on its own sure foundations of love to God 
and love for man. 

The contrast between the practical operation of 
heathen ethics and of the ethics of the Gospel, 
shows that the source of the one is terrestrial, and 
that the source of the other must be divine. What 
has the code of polytheism ever achieved for the 
reformation of humankind? Yet within the first 
half-century of its existence the faith of the car- 
penter's Son accomplished a moral revolution of the 



114 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

world, no less miraculous than his healing the sick, 
controlling the elements, and raising the dead. 
" See how these christians live" — " See how these 
christians die" — were appeals to infidelity by the 
infant church, perhaps more heart-touching and 
efficient than any of its ordinary signs and won- 
ders. Even the unbelieving Gibbon admits and 
affects to eulogize the sanctity of the primitive 
faithful ; and assigns that sanctity as one of his five 
causes of the Gospel's early and astounding spread. 

Christianity disclaims what are called, in classic 
language, the heroic virtues. Among these alleged 
virtues is ranked the love of fame. It was the 
most stirring impulse of heathen antiquity. To 
the good opinion of his fellow-mortals, the christian 
is not indifferent. Yet thirst of earthly renown 
cannot become the absorbing principle of him who 
aspires after " a crown of glory that fadeth not 
away." Revenge w T as a passion of the pagans, 
sanctioned by the example of their gods. It was 
the choicest beverage of unbaptized humanity. 
More unrelenting than death, it often wreaked its 
vengeance on the dead. Homer's Achilles, though, 
perhaps, a fictitious character, was drawn by the 
hand of a master in strict accordance with the sen- 
timents of heathen antiquity. It offended not the 



THE MOEALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 115 

taste of refined Athens, nor that of chivalrous 
Rome! Yet the Achilles of Homer, in the very 
eye of parental and conjugal affection outraged 
and frantic, dragged at his horse's heels round - the 
walls of Troy, the lifeless body of his gallant rival. 
How hostile is the passion of revenge to the ethics 
of Him, who laid down his life for his enemies ! 
Martial heroism stood at the very head of heathen 
perfections. Adulation pursued the blood-stained 
footsteps of the conqueror while he lived; and 
when he had waded through slaughter to the grave, 
the voice of millions raised him to the skies, and 
worshipped him as a god. But martial heroism 
found no place in the peaceful ethics of the cross. 

Our limits allow not a detailed examination of 
all the christian graces. We can but glance at a 
few of them. And as we approach the lovely 
group, our eyes repose with complacency on humil- 
ity's modest and retiring form. " Blessed are the 
poor in spirit," was the first of the beatitudes of 
the mount. The great Schoolmaster, who taught 
by example as well as precept, was himself "meek 
and lowly in heart." Humility had no place in 
the ethics of polytheism. The unpretending virtue 
would have been deemed pusillanimous by classic 
antiquity. It is a flower uncongenial to earth ; its 



116 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

native soil is heaven ; it was transplanted into our 
sphere from the skies. No pagan sage would have 
incorporated into his ethical code the injunction, so 
opposed to the impulses of the natural heart, " Who- 
soever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to 
him the other also." 

But even reason, when enlightened by the lamp 
of Revelation, must perceive that humility is an 
appropriate and primary element in a moral system 
whose centre is the Sun of righteousness. Supreme 
love of God must be preceded and accompanied by 
the knowledge of his perfections. And who can 
steadfastly contemplate the glorious perfections of 
Jehovah, without a deep sense of self-abasement ? 
Job exclaimed, " I have heard of thee by the hear- 
ing of the ear ; but now mine eye seeth thee ; where- 
fore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes."* 
Humility increases in the soul, in exact proportion 
to its increase in the knowledge and love of Him 
who governs the universe. The saint in heaven is 
doubtless humbler than the saint on earth. In the 
ascending ranks of angels and archangels, of cher- 
ubim and seraphim, of principalities and powers, 
we may believe that humility augments with each 



* Job xlii. 5, 6. 



THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 117 



successive grade of the ascent, from the subaltern 
spirits that watch the celestial gates, to " Gabriel" 
that stands "in the presence of God." And if 
pride is abhorrent to a holy creature who has never 
swerved from his " first estate," how unbecoming 
must it be to a fallen sinner, rescued from perdition 
by the free and sovereign grace of God ! 

The heroism of the Gospel claims brotherhood 
with its humility. There is a christian as well as 
a martial chivalry. Truthless is the taunt of infi- 
delity, that the faith of the cross, though it may 
have produced martyrs, never produced heroes. 
True heroism consists in the dedication of the soul 
to some lofty and worthy object, and its undeviat- 
ing pursuit of that object in defiance of privations, 
hardships, dangers, and death. In all these attri- 
butes of greatness, the primitive heroes of Christian- 
ity looked down, as from a celestial elevation, upon 
the warlike heroes bodied forth in profane history 
and classic fiction. 

Take as an example, the tent-maker of Corinth. 
Compare the chivalrous Paul with the mightiest of 
the Csesars. Both excelled in extent of mental 
attainments, in glowing eloquence, in loftiness of 
imagination, in profoundness of intellect, in un- 
daunted intrepidity. But here ceased the simili- 



118 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

tude. Julius worshipped self as his only god. 
Paul was the devoted, the disinterested worshipper 
of Him who "sitteth in the heavens." He of 
Rome sought 

" To wade through slaughter to a throne, 
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind." 

He of Tarsus untiringly strove, at every personal 
sacrifice, to conduct a fallen race to the portals of 
paradise. The writings of Caesar abound in start- 
ling egotisms. Paul rarely indulged in holy boast- 
ing. But he ever gloried in sufferings of which 
unsanctified humanity would have been ashamed. 
"Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes 
save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods ; once 
was I stoned ; thrice I suffered shipwreck ; a night 
and a day have I been in the deep ; in journeyings 
often ; in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in 
perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the 
heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wil- 
derness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false 
brethren ; in weariness and painfulness, in watch- 
ings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often,- 
in cold and nakedness."* 



* 2 Corinthians xi. 24-28. 



THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 119 



Had not this thrilling account of the tent-maker 
been true, its falsity would have been detected and 
exposed by the Corinthians, to whom it was written, 
and who were intimately acquainted with the bi- 
ography of the writer. His stoning, his shipwrecks, 
his weariness and painfulness, his hunger and thirst, 
his watchings, fastings and nakedness, his perils of 
water and of cold, of robbers, of his own country- 
men, of false brethren, and of the heathen, of the 
city and of the wilderness, we pass over without 
special comment ; for they did not necessarily im- 
ply disgrace. But the champion of the cross was 
thrice beaten with rods ; five times received he 
forty lashes save one. These inflictions left stains 
more corroding than their wounds : they have 
immemorially been assigned as the ignominious 
punishments of the basest crimes. The unregene- 
rate brave have sometimes sought 

" The bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth." 

But nothing save the heroism of the Gospel ever 
voluntarily and repeatedly encountered the felon's 
stripes. 

Forgiveness of injuries is another constituent of 
evangelical morals. It is a duty urged in the Gos- 
pel with peculiar emphasis. "If ye forgive men 



120 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also 
forgive you; but if you forgive not men their 
trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your 
trespasses."* " And his Lord was wroth, and de- 
livered him to the tormentors till he should pay 
all that was due unto him ; so likewise shall my 
heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your 
hearts forgive not every one his brother their tres- 
passes."f In the form of prayer taught by our 
Lord, we are commanded to say, "And forgive us 
our debts as we forgive our debtors." Thus our peti- 
tion to God for the forgiveness of ourselves is based 
on the express condition that we forgive our ene- 
mies. How can this daily prayer be uttered with- 
out palsying the tongue of the supplicant, if his 
own heart remains unforgiving and relentless ? In 
this prayer of prayers, Christ assimilated the human 
forgiveness of injuries to the divine forgiveness of 
the sins of the world. The one is, indeed, a drop, 
the other a shoreless ocean of grace! But the 
drop and the ocean are kindred in nature, though 
differing infinitely in degree. Man becomes god- 
like when he imitates the pardoning attribute of 
God. But what sage of polytheism ever discovered 



* Matthew vi. 14, 15. 



f Matthew xviii. 34, 35. 



THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 121 

and proclaimed the elemental principle of universal 
ethics, binding from the creation of humankind, 
and requiring man to forgive from his heart his 
offending fellows, not until seven times only, " but 
until seventy times seven?" 

Universal beneficence is a vital element of Gos- 
pel morals. Jesus Christ represents the exercise 
of this virtue as the severing test between the 
righteous and the wicked, in the great and terrible 
day of final retribution. " Then shall the King say 
unto them on his right hand, Come ye blessed of 
my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you 
from the foundation of the world ; for I was an 
hungered and ye gave me meat ; I was thirsty and 
ye gave me drink ; I was a stranger and ye took 
me in ; naked and ye clothed me ; I was sick and 
ye visited me ; I was in prison and ye came unto 
me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, 
Lord, when saw we thee an hungered and fed 
thee ? or thirsty and gave thee drink ? When 
saw we thee a stranger and took thee in ? or naked 
and clothed thee ? or when saw we thee sick, 
or in prison, and came unto thee? And the 
King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I 
say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it 

unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have 
6 



122 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

done it unto me."* In this passage, so tran- 
scendant for simplicity, pathos and awful grandeur, 
our blessed Saviour singled out beneficence as the 
passport to everlasting bliss, not because it is the 
only virtue in the evangelical code, but because its 
habitual exercise is the sure token of the presence 
of all its sister graces. 

The duty of christian beneficence is not con- 
fined to alms-giving. " Like the gentle rain of 
heaven," its genial influences pervade the universal 
soil, parched and illimitable, of human wants. It 
has given eyes to the blind, and ears to the deaf, 
and a tongue to the dumb ; created hospitals for 
the sick, and cast its maternal mantle over the de- 
mented. It has poured its illuminating rays upon 
the benighted mind ; erected schools for the juve- 
nile poor, and thrown open its colleges for the free 
instruction of generous aspirants after knowledge 
in the higher grades. 

But it is in the relief of spiritual maladies that 
the energy of christian beneficence has been most 
strikingly displayed. For the salvation of souls 
what toils, what hardships, what " most disastrous 
chances" has it not joyously encountered ? After 



* Matthew xxv. 34-41. 



THE MORALTTY OF THE GOSPEL.* 123 



the first few centuries of Christianity had elapsed, 
its progress in the healing of the nations became, 
indeed, for a long while slow and hesitating. But 
on these latter times a glorious light is dawning. 
Princes have become " nursing fathers" to evan- 
gelizing beneficence. Commerce, its faithful hand- 
maiden, is whitening all the seas ; wonder-working 
steam lends it all her potency ; and the lightning 
of heaven has promised it her wings. 

Beneficence was a stranger to polytheism. 
Classic antiquity had no schools for the poor ; no 
hospitals for the diseased ; no Howard for the 
prison-houses. She left to heartless avarice, steeled 
even against parental and filial ties, the lives of her 
helpless infants and aged. Her favorite recreations 
were gladiatorial murders. If she visited distant 
climes, it was to slaughter the doomed inhabitants, 
or make them slaves. With the mighty hope of 
renovating a fallen race her bosom never glowed. 

The Gospel commands us to overcome the 
world. The conquest enjoined is not like that to 
which Napoleon aspired, and which the son of 
Philip achieved. The world to be conquered is the 
little world within ourselves. Such victory is more 
illustrious than was ever accomplished by "gar- 
ments rolled in blood." " He that ruleth his spirit 



124 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

is better than he that taketh a city."* It was an 
adage of lettered antiquity, that a good man strug- 
gling with adverse fortune, was a spectacle recrea- 
ting even to the gods. But man's most glorious 
achievement is the mastery of himself. He who 
by divine grace can successfully say to the stormy 
passions of his own soul, " Hitherto shalt thou come, 
but no further ; and here shall thy proud waves be 
stayed,"f is an object upon whom, not the false gods 
of polytheism, but the Jehovah of the Bible, can 
look down with complacency. 

Such conquest of self is an indispensable prelim- 
inary to the favor of heaven. The unholy desires 
of the miniature world within us must be reclaimed, 
its lusts exterminated, its strong citadel of selfish- 
ness razed to the ground, or we cannot enter into 
the kingdom of God. Unprejudiced reason, with 
the Gospel shining around her, must perceive the 
necessity of moral renovation here as a preparative 
for bliss hereafter. For how could impenitent sin 
commingle through endless ages with immaculate 
holiness ? Such moral renovation was a stranger 
even to the dreams of heathen antiquity. Her 
ferocious warriors she sent to elysium red from the 



* Proverbs xvi. 32. 



f Job xxxviii. 11. 



THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 125 

fields of their wanton and murderous slaughter; 
her profligate kings and emperors she transformed 
to deities when earth could no longer endure the 
burden of their presence. 

The sanctions of the christian code bear evident 
marks of heavenly lineage. By the sanctions of a 
law are meant its rewards for obedience, and its 
penalties for transgression ; the former called remu- 
neratory, the latter vindicatory. An edict without 
sanctions is but naked advice; its obedience or 
disobedience depending on the volition of those to 
whom it is addressed. Human sanctions rely for 
their efficiency upon extraneous proofs ; without 
the aid of auxiliary evidence, they must remain 
utterly powerless, especially in the vindicatory, 
which is their principal department. In a land 
filled with all the complicated machinery of courts 
and of prisons, transgression may walk in triumph, 
if, by the stealthiness of its steps or the adroitness 
of its disguises, it can lull the inattentive ear and 
beguile the unsuspicious eye. Even where the 
evidence of guilt is clear, municipal sanctions are 
often eluded by flight, and sometimes resisted by 
force. They penetrate not the secret chambers of 
guilt; the hidden springs of crime are beyond their 
grasp ; they enter not the deep and dark laborato- 



126 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



ries of the heart ; they reach not beyond the brief 
span of mortal life. 

The sanctions of the evangelical code pervade 
the innermost " thoughts and intents." None can 
resist them by force, or avoid them by flight, or 
elude them by craft. They invoke the hopes and 
the terrors of eternity. They require the aid of 
no extraneous proofs. The omniscient eye, doth it 
not see ? The omnipresent ear, doth it not hear ? 
The omnipotent arm, who can withstand? The 
Book of God's Remembrance, who will gainsay ? 
That dread Volume records even the most secret 
aspirations of unembodied guilt; and there are 
registered each widow's mite cast into the treasury 
of benevolence, and every cup of cold water given 
to any of Christ's little ones in the name of a dis- 
ciple. 

The Judgment of the Great Day is the most aw- 
ful conception that ever dilated the human mind. 
How puerile, how despicable, were the tribunals of 
heathen gods, erected by classic polytheism for the 
sentence of departed spirits ! Yet were they decked 
with all " the pride, pomp, and circumstance" which 
the uninspired imagination could conceive. The 
Judgment Scene of the Gospel is an original delin- 
eation achieved by no mortal pencil. Without 



THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 127 

divine teachings, it was impossible that in repre- 
senting the award of final retributions to human 
kind, the unlettered fishermen of Galilee should so 
immeasurably have transcended, in simplicity, in 
pathos, in unearthly grandeur, all the imaginings 
of Homer, of Plato, and of Virgil. The combined 
skill of ages has been exercised to surround terres- 
trial courts with whatever can excite respect, ven- 
eration, or awe. Yet how do the courts of earth 
sink into nothingness compared with the Grand 
Assize of the Son of God, when he shall come to 
judgment on his throne of clouds, with the hosts of 
heaven in his train, preceded by the archangel's 
trump, and met by the thronging dead ! Without 
teachings from above, the peasants of Judea could 
have delineated the scriptural picture of the final 
advent of the Judge of all the earth, no more than 
they could " thunder with a voice like Him."* 



* Job xL 9. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 

Difficulty of delineating character — Especially that of perfect man 
— Delineation of perfect man reserved for fishermen of Galilee — 
They had no model — Difficulty enchanced by the fact that the 
Christ of the Gospel enshrined the second person of the Trinity — 
Infidelity gains nothing by supposing that Christ was the deceiver 
and his biographers the dupes — Enacting perfect character more 
difficult than even delineation of one — His blended meekness, low- 
liness, and majesty — His humiliation surpassed what mere man 
would have voluntarily endured or conceived — His piety — His 
benignity — His beneficence — Cases of Bartimeus — The sinful 
woman who anointed his feet — The prodigal son — His restoring 
Lazarus to life — His weeping over Jerusalem. 

The power of delineating character with truth 
and vividness, is one of the rarest attributes of ge- 
nius. To this attribute the great historians of an- 
cient and modern times are indebted for their fame. 
It is this almost peerless attribute which has clothed 
with immortality the few imaginative writers who 
have triumphed over the ravages of time. To 
create a hero and sustain his consistency in all the 
varied relations of life, requires a discrimination of 
intellect, an accuracy of judgment, and a plastic 
power of fancy, seldom vouchsafed to mortals. 
And of all fictitious characters of earthly mould, 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 129 

the most difficult to draw would doubtless be that 
of a perfect man. In the light and shades of a 
mixed character, compounded of good and evil, slight 
inaccuracies might escape detection. But in the 
pure white of the portraiture of a perfect man, the 
slightest blemish must be palpable to sight. The 
successful delineation of personified perfection in 
the multifarious vicissitudes of life, is a consumma- 
tion to which the uninpsired imagination could not 
attain. And profane history has not, in her ample 
confines, a single original of immaculate excellence 
to portray. 

The biography of a perfect man was reserved 
for the unlettered peasants of Judea. They had 
no model of terrestrial lineage to imitate. Sin had 
blotted out Eden. Ideal perfection was a phantom 
varying with climes and epochs ; one thing at clas- 
sic Athens, another at iron-bound Sparta, and yet 
another in majestic Rome. The evangelists, un- 
less they drew from life, had nothing to guide them 
but the ignis fatuus of their own wild imagina- 
tions. Yet of their perfect man they were to form, 
not merely one moral picture representing him at 
a single point of his being, but a series of original 
drawings delineating his whole diversified progress 

from the Cradle to the tomb. And they were to 
6* 



130 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



draw, not for Palestine alone, but for the world ; 
not for their own age only, but for all the succeed- 
ing centuries of time. 

The evangelical historians essayed a still bolder 
flight. They affirmed that their perfect man en- 
shrined the second person of the Trinity ; that the 
Christ of the Gospel was the Word made flesh ; the 
son of Mary, and at the same time the uncreated Son 
of the Highest ; born in a manger, and yet inhabit- 
ing the earliest eternity ; a carpenter on earth, and 
yet the Framer of the heavens. The illiterate 
peasants of Judea assumed the biography of Je- 
hovah clothed in humanity. If the Gospel is an 
imposture, its authors must have originated the un- 
earthly conception of the iucarnation of Him who 
" thought it not robbery to be equal with God." 
And this conception so much above the sphere of 
mortal intellect, was but the prelude to the mightier 
task which lay before them. They had to conduct 
from the manger to the cross the complex Being of 
their conception, and to make him speak and act 
and suffer, and die, as became an incarnate Deity. 
He was not to be represented as " the high and 
lofty One," throned in heaven ; but as manifesting 
himself to the children of humanity as the infinite 
Word never manifested himself to his creatures 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 



131 



until he became flesh and dwelt among them. The 
thoughts and emotions, the language and deeds, of 
their original and unique Personage, were to be as 
original and unique as the constitution of his mys- 
terious being. In all the varieties of his life he was 
to blend harmoniously the almightiness and majesty 
of a God with the feebleness and humility of a man. 
The consistency of this awful Being was to be 
maintained with an untiring eye and unfaltering 
hand, in his birth, in the expansion of his youth, in 
the maturity of his manhood, in his arrest, trial and 
crucifixion. Such a picture, blending godhead and 
manhood, earth and heaven, with perfect distinct- 
ness and concord, could have been drawn only by 
the pencil of the Holy Ghost. The picture has 
been hung on high for the world to gaze at. It has 
riveted the profound criticism of eighteen centu- 
ries. No blemish in it has been found. And yet 
in such a picture, a blemish would be as palpable 
as a spot on the luminary of day. 

No uninspired effort could have achieved the 
scriptural delineation of Jesus Christ. Mortal pen- 
cil cannot paint a God. That the delineation has 
so long commanded reason's profoundest homage is 
no proof that it was the workmanship of reason. 
The human mind may approve and admire what it 



132 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



could never have originated. It could not have 
contrived the plan of the solar system ; yet it may 
contemplate with wonder and complacency its 
beauty, its magnificence, its divine architecture, 
when revealed by the power of the telescope. 

Infidelity can gain nothing by supposing that 
Jesus Christ was himself the impostor, and that his 
biographers were but the credulous dupes of decep- 
tion. Such a supposition would be placing unbelief 
on the more hopeless horn of a desperate dilemma. 
If the united efforts of his biographers could not 
have conceived the character imputed to him in the 
Sacred Volume, how could he himself, if human 
only, have conceived it ? If their uninspired hu- 
manity must needs have failed in delineating such 
a character, how could his humanity have enacted 
it in his own person without the aid of indwelling 
divinity ? Upon the supposition that he was but a 
man, it is most unlikely that he should have im- 
agined the character with which the Gospel invests 
him ; and if he had imagined the character, it is im- 
possible that he could have bodied it forth in consist- 
ent and harmonious action. To perform is more 
difficult than to conceive or to express. That with- 
out indwelling divinity, mortal man could have spo- 
ken the words, and done the deeds, and lived the life, 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 133 

and died the death, predicated of Jesus Christ, is a 
theory involving a more stupendous miracle than 
any recorded in the Gospel. 

The incarnate God was "meek and lowly in 
heart." He was born in a manger, and wrapped in 
its straw. He toiled for years in the workshop of 
Joseph. Worse accommodated in his own world 
than the birds of the air or the foxes of the field, 
the Proprietor of the universe had not where to lay 
his head. At his last interview with the chosen 
twelve, the Lord of glory rose from supper, and took 
a towel and girded himself, and washed the feet of 
his betraying and deserting disciples. Though 
clothed in the mantle of omnipotence, he suffered 
himself to be arrested, reviled, buffeted, scourged, 
spitted on in the face, crucified between two 
thieves ! 

Such meekness and lowliness were not creations 
of fancy. They pertain not to proud man even in 
thought. The carnal heart would deem them be- 
low the dignity of human nature. No writer of 
romance would have ventured to subject his chief 
character to the degradations voluntarily borne by 
Jesus Christ. Not the genius of Homer, or Virgil, 
of Dante, Boccacio, or Scott, could have saved 
from contempt and oblivion a work of fiction rep- 



134 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

resenting its hero as the tame and willing recipient 
of scoffings, and scourgings, and spittings. But the 
Hero of the Gospel was a God! His voluntary 
degradation was too profound for humanity to have 
endured — for humanity to have conceived. 

The incarnation of the second person of the 
Trinity, is the absorbing marvel in the story of 
redeeming love. If faith but firmly grasps that 
wonder of wonders, it may contemplate with less 
amazement the subsequent, miracles of his humilia- 
tion. The privations, insults and sufferings which 
he so meekly bore from his lowly birth to his ex- 
piring cry, were but subsidiary to the stupendous 
object of his becoming flesh. It might be expected 
of Him who had divested himself of " the form of 
God" for " the form of a servant," that his humilia- 
tion, infinite in its commencement, should have 
continued infinite in all its after demonstrations. 
In keeping with his incarnation were the swaddling 
clothes of the manger, the robes of mockery, the 
crown of thorns, the crucifixion between malefac- 
tors. With the incarnation in full view, it seems 
not incredible to the awe-stricken imagination, 
that the God made flesh should have suffered as 
man never suffered, and should have humbled him- 
self as man was never voluntarily humbled. 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 135 

Yet with all the meekness and lowliness of the 
incarnate God were harmoniously intermingled 
traits of majesty and of glory, which the uninspired 
child of humanity could no more have delineated 
than he could have painted to the life the arch of 
heaven. In all the scriptural canvass the de- 
scended Deity stands pre-eminently forth, veiled 
but not wholly concealed by his covering of flesh. 
His words and his deeds sustained his claim to 
oneness with the Father, and his assumption of the 
incommunicable name of the Old Testament, I 
AM. His unearthly teachings bear on their fore- 
head the awful impress of the Godhead. Well 
might the multitudes have exclaimed, that "he 
taught them as one having authority, and not as 
the scribes." It was not the lore of earth, but the 
wisdom of heaven, that flowed from his lips. He 
wrought his daily miracles by the same unbor- 
rowed potency that said in the beginning, " Let 
there be light, and there was light." Of the celes- 
tial courts, he spoke with the familiar knowledge 
that a princely sojourner in a foreign clime might 
display in speaking of his paternal halls. His thrill- 
ing descriptions of the Final Judgment, surpassing 
in sublimity anything ever conceived by man, 
drew from him no elaboration of speech or pomp 



136 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



of diction ; for that great event, in all its magnifi- 
cence, is to be a simple exertion of his wonted al- 
mightiness. 

The originality and perfection of Christ's char- 
acter will better appear from a review of some of 
its component elements. Our review must neces- 
sarily be brief. The glowing theme might well be 
expanded into a volume. 

His piety was original, unique, perfect, godlike. 
It was not wont to display itself in ebullitions of 
rapture. The Saviour of the world was no fanat- 
ic ; deep, calm, wise, and practical was his devo- 
tion. Though the live-long night often witnessed 
on the cold mountain-top his solitary prayers, yet 
the return of morning ever found him restored to 
the busy haunts of life. He affected no austerities, 
no peculiarity of dress, language or manners ; his 
example afforded no model for ascetic mortifica- 
tions. His was the bland and cheerful holiness of 
God's right hand, condescending to dwell awhile 
on earth, full of grace and love. He mingled in 
familiar intercourse with the children of humanity. 
He came "eating and drinking;" he mixed in 
scenes of innocent conviviality; he sat down at 
meat with publicans and sinners. He sought no 
solitudes to dwell in ; he rejoiced " in the habitable 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 137 

part of his earth," and his " delights were with the 
sons of men."* 

The benignity of Jesus Christ was a distinguish- 
ing constituent of his character. We here allude, 
not so much to the infinitude of his compassion 
demonstrated in his incarnation and vicarious suf- 
ferings, as to those lesser graces, never to have 
been conceived by the human mind, which marked 
his whole philanthropic life. An atmosphere of 
holy love breathed constantly from his presence, 
as the rays of light emanate from the orb of day. 
In his early ministry, when first appearing as a 
public teacher where he had been brought up, he 
went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and 
the book of the prophet Esaias being delivered to 
him, he read therefrom ; " The Spirit of the Lord 
is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach 
the Gospel to the poor ; he hath sent me to heal 
the broken-hearted ; to preach deliverance to the 
captives, and recovering of sight to the blind ; to set 
at liberty them that are bruised ; to preach the ac- 
ceptable year of the Lord." No wonder that, as 
he closed the book, and gave it again to the minis- 
ter, and sat down, " the eyes of all them that were 



* Proverbs viii. 31. 



138 



TH12 GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



in the synagogue were fastened on him." How 
gracious had been his words ! How benignant his 
looks ! How vast the contrast between the quiet 
laborer in the workshop, and the glowing teacher in 
the church of Nazareth ! 

As the incarnate God went out from Jericho, 
blind Bartimeus sat by the way-side begging, and 
cried, " Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on 
me." The multitude sternly rebuked what they 
deemed the obtrusive importunity. An earthly 
prince might have passed on in careless or disdain- 
ful silence. But the Son of Mary was the personi- 
fication of that mercy w r hich " dwelleth between 
the cherubims." Never did a whisper of sincere 
prayer escape the ear of Him "who hears the 
young ravens when they cry." He stood still; he 
commanded that the sightless beggar should be 
called. Thus summoned, the humble suppliant re- 
newed his importunate petition, " Lord, that I 
might receive my sight !" " And Jesus said unto 
him, go thy way ; thy faith hath made thee whole." 
And the blind, restored to the light of heaven, joy- 
ously followed in his Saviour's train. 

Jesus was sent "to heal the broken-hearted." 
As he was sitting a bidden guest at the table of the 
pharisee, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 139 

" brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood 
at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash 
his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the 
hairs of her head, and kissed his feet and anointed 
them with ointment." The pharisee cavilled in his 
heart that he, who assumed to be a prophet, should 
have permitted himself to be thus contaminated by 
the touch of pollution. But Jesus had come " to 
seek and to save that which was lost/' Perceiving 
the secret thoughts of his host, he recounted the 
pathetic tokens of the woman's contrition, and then 
said to him in the presence of those who sat at 
meat, " Wherefore I say unto thee that her sins, 
which are many, are forgiven ; for she loved much." 
And instead of reminding the guilt-stained and 
spirit-broken penitent of her past offences, he dis- 
missed her by kindly saying, " Thy faith hath saved 
thee, go in peace." How exhaustless is the foun- 
tain of redeeming love ! How exquisitely touching 
this heaven-drawn portraiture of pardoning grace ! 

The Gospel was wont to elucidate and impress 
its doctrines and precepts by images borrowed 
from nature and from life. It thus brought home 
its great truths to " the business and bosoms" of 
men, with a familiarity and power to which classic 
learning was a stranger. Almost at the head of 



140 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



this species of sacred teachings stands the wonder- 
ful parable of the prodigal son. The seemingly 
hopeless reprobate shadowed forth the gentile sin- 
ner; Jesus himself was the impersonation of the 
forgiving father. Overwhelmed by complicated 
miseries, and pressed by the iron hand of famine, 
the long lost son at length came to himself, and 
penitently sought the place of an hired servant in 
his native halls. The keen eye of ineffable affec- 
tion recognized him " a great way off," disguised 
as he was by tattered rags and the deep impress 
of sin, want and shame ; the yearning parent " had 
compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed 
him." The fattened calf was killed ; the best robe 
was brought forth ; shoes were put upon his naked 
feet ; the ring of love was placed upon his emaciated 
finger ; and the home of his boyhood was made to 
welcome his return with gladsome sounds of music 
and festivity. Such is the never-failing mercy of 
the redeeming God ! Such his patient waiting for 
the prodigal's return! Such his "joy over one 
sinner that repenteth." 

Jesus " went about doing good." Lazarus was 
dead ; he and his pious sisters had been beloved by 
the incarnate Deity. The great Physician drew 
near to the house of mourning ; the bereaved or- 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 141 

phans came out to meet him, attended by their 
sympathizing friends. The faithful Mary fell down 
at his feet ; her companions joined in the general 
wail; the compassionate God "groaned in spirit 
and was troubled." He was conducted to the 
homely grave ; the putrescent body had been four 
days dead. " Jesus wept." Even the Jews ex- 
claimed, " Behold how he loved him." He lifted up 
his mandatory voice, so bland, yet so potent ; death 
released its grasp ; decay bloomed into health ; 
Lazarus came forth; and for his loosened grave- 
clothes were substituted the folding arms of sisterly 
affection. Such was the graciousness of the Word 
made flesh ! Yet was the resuscitation at the cave 
of Bethany but a faint emblem of the blood-bought 
renovation of a world " dead in trespasses and 
sins." 

Jesus approached Jerusalem to suffer and to die. 
Yet the anticipated pangs of Gethsemane and of 
Calvary were absorbed for awhile in his piteous 
moans over the city of his executioners. When as 
he descended from the mount of Olives, he came in 
full view of the metropolis so soon to be bathed in 
his blood, he wept over it as he had wept over the 
body of Lazarus, " Saying, if thou hadst known, 
even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which 



142 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



belong unto thy peace ! but now they are hid from 
thine eyes." And in another of the evangelists he 
exclaimed ; " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that 
killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent 
unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy 
children together, even as a hen gathereth her 
chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" Nor 
did the immediate pains of crucifixion chill the 
warm fountain of his compassion. He infused a 
foretaste of heaven into the heart of the penitent 
thief at his side; amidst his own agonies he failed 
not to remember his houseless mother ; and with 
his dying breath he invoked forgiveness upon those 
who had nailed him to the tree. 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 

"Wisdom of Jesus Christ — His sermon on the mount — Other cases 
of his unearthly wisdom — He was the patron and personification 
of holy friendship — His parting interview -with his disciples. — His 
simplicity — His manner of teaching — His indifference to human 
fame — Silence of Gospel concerning his personal appearance. 

The wisdom of the Son of God claimed brother- 
hood with his beneficence. We here refer, not so 
much to the divine wisdom displayed in the con- 
ception of the atonement, as to those hourly demon- 
strations of supernatural intelligence which marked 
the whole terrestrial pilgrimage of the God wrapped 
in the mantle of humanity. Jesus Christ was with- 
out human instruction, and so were his biographers ; 
they were the unlettered natives of a land deemed 
unlettered by the pride of classic antiquity. They 
could not, if they would, have fabricated the dis- 
plays of godlike knowledge constantly exhibited by 
Him who spoke as mortal never spoke. " How 
knoweth this man letters, having never learned V 
was the irrepressible exclamation of the listening 



144 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



and astonished Jews. The interrogatory has been 
reiterated by every student of the Gospel for eigh- 
teen centuries. The intelligence of Mary's son, if 
not divine, was miraculous. It was not the en- 
dowment of uninspired humanity. 

Contemplate the sermon of Christ upon the 
mount. Had the Bramins of India, the Chinese 
Confucius, the Persian Zoroaster, and all the 
learned sages of Greece, been convened in solemn 
conclave to digest a code of ethics and of theism, 
their united labors could not have approached 
nearer than earth approaches heaven to that com- 
pendium of the wise, the profound, the sublime, 
delivered by Jesus the carpenter, and recorded by 
Matthew the publican. What simpleness, what 
perspicuity of diction! What depth, what gran- 
deur of thought ! What comprehensiveness of 
doctrine ! What pureness of morals ! What de- 
velopments of the human heart ! What unfoldings 
of Jehovah's character ! The place was suited to 
the august occasion. No earthly synagogue would 
have held the thronging multitudes. It was a lofty 
and spacious temple, " not made with hands," hav- 
ing for its base the mountain-top, and for its roof 
the skies that the divine Speaker chose as the the- 
atre for his grand display of that Wisdom which, 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 145 

" when he prepared the heavens," " was by him as 
one brought up with him."* 

It was no mortal sage who tested in the balances 
of the sanctuary the widow's mite, and pro- 
nounced it heavier than all the oblations of the 
rich. That wisdom was not of this world, which, 
drawing aside the curtain of eternity, propounded 
to thoughtless mortals the tremendous interroga- 
tory, " What shall it profit a man if he shall gain 
the whole world, and lose his own soul ?" When 
vain curiosity had inquired of him, " Lord, are 
there few that be saved ?" the sagacity was more 
than human which dictated the silencing response, 
" Strive to enter in at the strait gate : for many, I 
say unto you, will seek to enter in and shall not 
be able." It was not within the scope of human 
rhetoric to have portrayed, as He of Nazareth por- 
trayed, the spiritual pride of the pharisee and the 
broken-hearted humility of the publican, when they 
" went up into the temple to pray." The delinea- 
tion of personified benevolence in the parable of 
the good Samaritan, bears decisive marks of that 
inimitable pencil which painted " the green of the 
earth and the blue of the heavens." 



* Proverbs viii. 27, 30. 
7 



146 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

The Jewish hierarchy pressed onward, and in- 
structed by demoniac cunning, often sought to en- 
trap our Saviour in his speech. With this view 
they brought to him a woman taken in adultery ; 
and after reminding him of the Mosaic ordinance, 
which required that such should be stoned, they 
temptingly asked him, " But what sayest thou ?" — 
thinking either to bring him into collision with the 
ancient laws of the nation, or else to expose the 
friend of sinners to the imputation of unfeeling 
severity. He, perceiving their guile, "stooped 
down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as 
though he heard them not." But as they con- 
tinued to press the inquiry, "he lifted himself up 
and said unto them, he that is without sin among 
you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again 
he stooped down and wrote on the ground." They 
felt the rebuke of the Omniscient ; and one by one 
they all went out, leaving " the woman standing in 
the midst." Resuming his erect position, he said 
to her, " Woman, where are those thine accusers ? 
hath no man condemned thee ? She said, No man, 
Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I con- 
demn thee ; go and sin no more."* With what 



* John viii. 3-11. 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 147 

simplicity does this scene illustrate the wisdom, as 
well as the mercy of the God made flesh ! 

Not seldom did Jesus by counter interrogatories 
overwhelm his treacherous foes. The chief priests 
insidiously asked him, "By what authority doest 
thou these things ? and who gave thee this author- 
ity ?" To avoid the alternative of silence or co- 
erced exposition, he preliminarily demanded of 
them whether the baptism of John was from 
heaven or of men. The leaders of the sanhedrim 
were confounded by the question, which they could 
not parry, and dared not explicitly answer; and 
thus was he relieved from the obligation of re- 
sponding to theirs. By means not wholly dissim- 
ilar, he eluded the snare adroitly prepared for him 
in the matter of paying tribute to Caesar. 

The great prophet of Nazareth was familiar with 
all the mysteries of our spiritual nature. To the 
young man in the Gospel who thought himself the 
personification of goodness, Jesus propounded, as 
the ordeal of his professed piety, the startling in- 
junction, " Go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast 
and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure 
in heaven, and come take up thy cross and follow 
me." A test, so true, yet so utterly repugnant to 
unregenerate humanity, adventurers, seeking to 



148 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



gain proselytes to an imposture, would never have 
ventured to prescribe. Nothing but that wisdom 
which is from above would have uttered or con- 
ceived the astounding truth, "It is easier for a 
camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a 
rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." And 
yet even reason itself, when taught by the Bible, 
must perceive that the change of heart, essential 
to qualify the idolater of wealth for communion 
with the pure spirits of heaven, is a greater prodigy 
than the passage of a camel through a needle's eye. 
The physical miracle might be achieved by the 
simple mandate of the Almighty ; the accomplish- 
ment of the moral miracle required as its prelimi- 
nary the incarnation and death of the Son of God. 

Repugnance to believe revealed truths has been 
a distinguishing characteristic of our race ever 
since the fall. Man sleeps for ages in heathen ig- 
norance, or Mohammedan delusion, with little of 
skeptical misgiving to disturb his lethargic repose. 
But wherever the light of Inspiration seeks to es- 
tablish its supremacy, the alarmed prince of dark- 
ness arouses himself, and insidiously sows the tares 
of cavil and of doubt; and these noxious weeds 
spring up in the rank soil of the carnal mind with 
fearful luxuriance. The weakness of fallen human- 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 149 

ity, and the vigilance and power of the arch enemy 
were well known to the omniscient Redeemer, who 
compassionated the doubting Thomas, and conde- 
scended to confirm his faith by the exhibition of 
his own pierced hands and wounded side. To the 
petition that the sainted beggar might be sent from 
the bosom of Abraham to the five brethren of the 
lost epicure, to warn them of their impending fate, 
Jesus made the father of the faithful thus respond ; 
" If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither 
will they be persuaded though one rose from the 
dead." This response, though veritable as heaven, 
would not have been conceived by human wisdom. 
Where, in all the volumes of uninspired genius, can 
be found sketching so graphic, so sublime, so aw- 
fully grand and appalling, as that displayed by the 
Galilean mechanic in the parable of the rich man 
" clothed in purple and fine linen," and the beggar 
"laid at his gate full of sores !" 

Infidelity has vauntingly objected, that in the 
code of the virgin's Son, friendship is a stranger. 
Even the eloquent and admired Soame Jenyns af- 
firms that friendships " in their utmost purity de- 
serve no recommendation from this religion." 
What, then, shall be said of the friendship of Jesus 
for the family of Lazarus ? What of his affection 



150 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

for the beloved disciple who leaned on his bosom ? 
What of the predilections of the primitive apostles 
for those in whom they found a holy congeniality 
of temper and of taste ? The Gospel soil is not un- 
propitious to the grow r th of any generous affection. 
" We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren," 
was the glow T ing declaration of the disciple whose 
heart overflowed with all the tenderest sensibilities 
of friendship. Jesus himself "is a friend that 
sticketh closer than a brother."* What but friend- 
ship for the friendless prompted him, when he was 
rich, for our sakes to become poor ? " Greater love 
hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life 
for his friends." Yet was this acme of finite affec- 
tion expanded into infinity when the Son of God 
laid down his life for his enemies ! 

The drama of redeeming love rose in interest as 
it approached its close. One of its most moving 
scenes was the interview between Jesus and his 
disciples just before his mournful visit to the garden. 
He fed them with the symbols of his own body and 
blood ; the Lord and Master washed his servants' 
feet. As soon as the traitor had left the sacred 
presence, there was laid open to the faithful eleven 



* Proverbs xviii. 24. 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 151 

the very soul of the incarnate Deity. No longer 
regarding them as servants, he styled them his 
friends; he bequeathed to them the enjoyment of 
the richest jewel in his treasury, even his own price- 
less peace. Announcing his departure from the 
world, he cheered them with the assurance that he 
went to prepare for them mansions in his Father's 
house. He promised the Comforter, who should 
abide with them forever. The pressing remem- 
brance of his own approaching pangs was absorbed 
for a time in the kindly charities of parting friend- 
ship. Thrice did he reiterate to the mourning 
orphans his dying mandate, that they should love 
one another. The interview he closed by fervent 
prayer, invoking blessings on those so soon to be 
bereaved, and on the faithful to the end of time. 
Such was the friendship of the friend of sinners ! 
Where can such a parting interview be found in 
the annals of earthly affection ? 

A striking feature in the character of Christ was 
his matchless simplicity. His manners were sim- 
ple ; his style was guileless of art ; he arrayed the 
profoundest thoughts in the plainest garb. His 
parables, so familiar, so unadorned, so sublimely 
concise and pathetic, make their way directly to 
the inmost recesses of the understanding, and to 



152 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



the very core of the heart. What was the oratory 
of Demosthenes or of Tully compared to the sim- 
ple, the soul-touching eloquence of Mary's Son? 
He delighted in the companionship of little chil- 
dren. When his disciples rebuked them, he ex- 
claimed, " Suffer little children, and forbid them 
not, to come unto me ; for of such is the kingdom 
of heaven." Wherein did little children resemble 
the pure spirits of paradise ? Surely not in holi- 
ness, born, as they were, in sin. The resemblance 
must have consisted in their artless simplicity. It 
was their simplicity, then, that endeared them to 
the gracious Saviour. Simplicity is an attribute 
of heaven ; and the Son of God was its personifica- 
tion on earth. At the creation he stamped sim- 
plicity on all his material works. The planets roll 
onward in simple majesty ; and the flowers of the 
field rear their little heads in simple loveliness. 
Simplicity marks every page of the volume of na- 
ture ; it marks, too, every page of the Volume of 
Grace. Their resemblance in simpleness manifests 
that both volumes are the offspring of one common 
Parent. 

The great Teacher had a manner of imparting 
instruction, which impostors would not and could 
not have fabricated. Well might the astonished 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRTST. 153 

people declare that " he taught them as one having 
authority." "Never man spake like this man," 
was the official report of the messengers of the 
chief priests and pharisees sent to arrest him. 
There is a wide difference between the confidence 
of truth and the effrontery of imposture. It was 
the majesty of conscious truth, bodied forth in look 
and voice, which carried home his glowing words 
to the inmost recesses of every soul. Honesty 
yielded them its implicit credence ; incorrigible 
prejudice gnashed on them with its teeth; none 
heard them with callous indifference. He taught 
not by elaborated discussions ; his effusions, extem- 
poraneous and sententious, seem generally to have 
been prompted by surrounding scenes or passing 
events. His doctrines and precepts he deigned 
not to sustain by concatenations of argument ; he 
deemed his own fiat their sufficient authentication. 
He sent forth his unpremeditated thoughts, as he 
sends forth the lightning of the skies, to illuminate 
and to strike by their own inherent potency. 

A master in either of the schools of learned 
Athens, would have been deemed insane had he 
practised the mode of teaching affirmed of the 
prophet of Nazareth. Nor would the fabricators 

of a religious romance have ventured to forge such 
7 # 



154 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



method for its hero. It would fail in naturalness, 
unless we assume that the incarnation was a re- 
ality. It is only through the sublime truth that 
the great Teacher in the Gospel was the second 
person of the Trinity, that we can divest his mode 
of teaching of its seeming incongruities. With the 
eye of faith steadfastly bent upon the incarnation, 
we may indeed perceive that although Jesus Christ 
spake as never man spake, yet that he nevertheless 
taught and commanded just as it became a Deity 
clothed in manhood, to teach and to command. It 
was to be expected that the eternal Word made 
flesh would address his creatures, as he had ad- 
dressed them at Sinai, in terms brief, sententious, 
imperative ; resting for authority, not on elaborate 
ratiocination, but upon his own ineffable majesty. 
The teaching of Jesus was in strict concord with 
the attributes of his complex being. It was a fit- 
ting part of one harmonious whole. To believe 
that stupendous whole the creation of unlettered 
peasants, would require a stronger faith than to be- 
lieve it a revelation from God. 

Fictitious writings live upon the breath of popu- 
lar applause. It is the element of their vitality; 
and if it is withdrawn, they die and become the 
food of worms. Imaginative authors, whether in 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 



155 



prose or verse, accommodate their fictions to the 
principles and passions of our common nature. 
Universal applause is the idol of their worship. 
The conquest of a world is as dear to them as it 
ever was to a martial hero. They follow public 
taste as the needle turns to the pole. Their plot 
with its episodes, their machinery., their artifices of 
arrangement and ornaments of diction, are all for 
effect. Even the epic muse bends her majestic 
form to the prejudices of ages and of climes. Her 
varied lore and her magic spells are all combined 
to win for herself an immortality of fame. Xo 
imaginative writer can ever aspire to renown with- 
out copious oblations upon the altars of the gods of 
this world. 

Of fame the "meek and lowly" Jesus was not a 
follower ; at the shrine of that goddess he offered 
no incense ; he stooped to none of fiction's arts to 
beguile attention and seduce belief. Instead of 
conciliating the pride of the heart., he declared it 
the sink of sin: instead of expatiating upon the 
dignity of human nature, he pronounced it so 
fallen, corrupt, and degraded as to require for its 
cleansing the tears of repentance and the blood of 
God. The flight of time never beheld a produc- 
tion so utterly opposed to every passion and preju- 



156 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

dice of humanity as was the Gospel of the crucified 
Redeemer. Nothing but the power of truth could 
have achieved its glorious triumphs. 

There are omissions in the evangelical accounts 
of Jesus Christ which would not have befallen 
works of romance. Fiction is wont to depict the 
features and mien of its hero. Reserve upon these 
attractive themes would essentially impair its 
chance for popular favor. Of the personal appear- 
ance of the Son of God the Gospel is silent. For 
eighteen centuries his outward man has been a sub- 
ject of almost painful inquisitiveness. What 
would not pious wealth have given for a statue or a 
painting of the Saviour of the world, wronght from 
scriptural materials by the hand of a master ! The 
Gospel affords no such materials. It contains ex- 
haustless food for the immortal mind ; not a tittle 
of aliment for idle curiosity. Even upon its 
heaven and its hell, it maintains a sublime reserve. 
It powerfully, yet dimly, shadows them forth to the 
awe-stricken imagination, without detailing the en- 
joyments of the blest, or the secrets of the great 
prison-house of despair. This is a peculiarity 
which distinguishes the religion of the cross from 
all impostures. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 

Trial of Jesus Christ — His grandeur and humility — Incidents of 
his trial — Conduct of Judas — No other traitor ever induced by 
compunctious visitings to commit suicide — His remorse and self 
murder were dying confessions of the innocency and godhead of 
his Master — Fall and penitence of Peter — Conduct of Pontius 
Pilate — The crucifixion of Jesus Christ — He spoke seven times 
from the cross — And as man never spoke — Bad men could not 
have forged the character of Jesus Christ if they would — And 
good men would not have forged it if they could — Extract from 
Rousseau. 

The trial of the Son of God detailed in the Sa- 
cred Record, constitutes one of the most stupendous 
scenes in the drama of salvation. Such a scene 
could not have been delineated by the unaided ef- 
forts of the fishermen of Galilee. How artless is 
the evangelical representation, surpassing in sim- 
plicity childhood's most guileless tale ! Yet how 
sublimely magnificent the conception bodied forth ! 
The Majesty of the heaven of heavens, clothed in 
manhood, stands a submissive captive at the bar of 
an earthly tribunal! How could the human mind 
of itself have imagined the words and acts befitting 
a Being so humbled, so transcendently august? 



158 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

Yet reason itself, enlightened by the Gospel, per- 
ceives, and is obliged to admit that the words and 
acts ascribed to the incarnate Deity were in exact 
accordance with the complex character he had 
condescended to assume. 

The grandeur and meekness of the Prisoner of 
Pilate were mingled in ineffable harmony. He mi- 
raculously prostrated to the ground those who came 
to seize him. He restored the severed ear of the 
servant of the high priest. He announced himself 
to be the King of the Jews, the predicted Messiah, 
the Son of God, the Judge of earth. Yet was he 
" brought as a lamb to the slaughter." Though he 
wielded the thunders of omnipotence, he permitted 
his oppressors to spit on him in the face; they buf- 
feted him ; they smote him with the palms of their 
hands ; they scourged him ; they gave him to drink 
vinegar mingled with gall ; they contemptuously 
clothed him in a purple robe, and placed on his 
head a crown of thorns, and bowed the knee before 
him in mock adoration. 

It was not in humanity, with the utmost fortitude 
pertaining to its sphere, to have borne with un- 
repining patience the mockings, the scourgings, 
the spittings, endured by the incarnate God. The 
delineation of his trial, if regarded as the imperso- 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 159 

nation of simple mortality, would seem strange and 
unnatural. Indwelling divinity is indispensable to 
its verisimilitude. Regarded as the impersonation 
of God manifested in the flesh that he might atone 
for the sins of the world by unearthly humiliation 
and sufferings, it assumes intrinsic marks of al- 
mighty truth. Thus viewed, the representation of 
the doings and sayings, and speaking silence of the 
Arraigned before Pilate, makes its resistless way to 
the understanding, the conscience and the heart. The 
events of his trial seem but the natural consequences 
of his incarnation. It was not to be expected that 
the humbled God would have humbled himself after 
the manner of men. When he became lowly, it 
was but godlike that his lowliness should, in its in- 
finitude, have resembled the infinitude of his glory. 

The trial and condemnation of Jesus Christ ex- 
hibit subordinate characters and incidents illustra- 
tive of his divinity. 

The treason of Judas consisted, not in acts of 
direct violence, but in his information to the chief 
priests of the time when his Master would be found 
in a solitary place, so that they might arrest him 
without danger of popular commotion. Upon 
learning that he was condemned, and about to be 
executed, the remorseful culprit went again to the 



160 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

chief priests, confessed to them that he had " be- 
trayed the innocent blood," and when they heeded 
him not, cast down at their feet the thirty pieces 
of silver, with which they had bribed him, and de- 
parted and hanged himself. The catastrophe of 
his unfaithfulness presents an anomaly in the his- 
tory of treason. Traitors have existed in every 
age ; but none save the betrayer of Emmanuel was 
ever driven by compunctious visitings to lay suici- 
dal hands upon himself. His despair and self-mur- 
der were not induced by the bare consciousness 
that he had betrayed innocent blood. Treason has 
often caused the death of innocency, and yet slept 
in callous indifference. Iscariot was urged to his 
fate by the maddening thought that he had be- 
trayed not only the blood of man, but the blood of 
God. 

The betrayer of Jesus could not have been mis- 
taken in the character and lineage of the Betrayed. 
He had spent years in his immediate family ; he 
had been the ear- witness of his doctrines and pre- 
cepts, the eye-witness of his wonderful works ; he 
had himself wrought miracles in his authoritative 
name. If he had only freed the world of an im- 
postor, he might have gloried in his act. But he 
well knew, and despairingly proclaimed, that he 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 



161 



had sold the Lord of glory. The cast out devils 
confessed that Jesus was the Son of God. The 
apostate Judas reiterated the momentous confes- 
sion; and his murderous hands sealed it with his 
own blood. 

Declarations solemnly made in the immediate 
presence of the king of terrors, without compulsion 
or persuasion, at the sacrifice of character and of 
property, stand second in convincing power to no 
testimony of earthly origin. The dying declaration 
of Iscariot w r as unsolicited and voluntary ; it drew 
after it the surrender of his thirty pieces of silver ; 
it superadded to the abhorrence of the faithful, the 
contempt of the Jews. It could not have been 
prompted by any expectation of arresting the sac- 
rilegious machinery he had set in motion, or of 
rendering more tolerable his condition in the com- 
ing world. It was a sublime and awful demonstra- 
tion of the intrinsic potency of truth, bursting forth 
by its own volcanic force from the despairing 
heart. We doubt whether the last declaration of 
the reprobate Judas is less decisive in its confirm- 
atory bearing on the christian evidences, than the 
dying declaration of the martyred Stephen, when 
he said, " Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the 
Son of man standing on the right hand of God." 



162 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



Infidelity can find no escape in the subterfuge, 
that the sacred writers may have forged the over- 
powering story of the betrayer of his Master. 
Matthew affirms that, when the conscience-smitten 
traitor had confessed the innocence of his victim, 
and cast down in the temple the thirty pieces of 
silver, the chief priests took up the money, and, 
declaring that it was not lawful to put into the 
treasury the price of blood, bought with the silver 
pieces the potter's field to bury strangers, and that 
the field was still called the field of blood when the 
evangelist wrote. 

The evangelist thus subjected the verity of his 
narrative to the test of public monuments and his- 
tory. Whether, just after the crucifixion, a ceme- 
tery had been purchased in the environs of the 
Hebrew metropolis for the interment of strangers ; 
whether that cemetery had originally assumed and 
ever maintained the name of " the field of blood,'* 
and whether its distinctive and strongly-marked 
appellation had been derived from the treason of 
Judas Iscariot; were points upon which the twi- 
light of peradventure rested not at the date of 
Matthew's publication. The truth or falsity of the 
alleged facts must have been known to all the 
dwellers at Jerusalem, when within less than a 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 163 

quarter of a century after their supposed occur- 
rence, the first of the Gospels made its appearance 
in that city. Many members of the sanhedrim, 
before which our Lord was arraigned, were doubt- 
less then living; and its deceased members were 
unquestionably represented by numerous descend- 
ants ready to sustain the character of their ances- 
tors. Vindictive hosts of Jewish and pagan oppo- 
nents, bent on exterminating the new and hated 
faith, would eagerly invoke from the repositories 
of truth or calumny, and triumphantly proclaim to 
a deriding world, any fact or rumor tending to im- 
peach the fidelity of the leading evangelist. Even 
Celsus, the heathen philosopher, who wrote elabo- 
rately against Christianity in the second century, 
admits, as we have already seen in a previous 
chapter, the truthfulness of the story of Judas, and 
urges, as an argument against our holy religion, 
that its Founder, claiming to be omniscient, per- 
mitted himself to be betrayed by one of his chosen 
twelve. 

Peter's fall and repentance are incidents of the 
trial of Jesus Christ strongly corroborative of the 
inspiration of the Gospel. The apostolic lapse, 
following so closely the most vehement assevera- 
tions of enduring constancy, would not have been 



164 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

likely to be introduced by unbelieving impostors 
into a work of fiction. It must have startled by 
its unnaturalness, were it not for the scriptural 
revelations of the deceitfulness of the heart, and 
the tremendous power of the prince of darkness. 
The unchristianized imagination would be still less 
apt to have devised the contrition of the apostle. 
Evangelical experience is a department of knowl- 
edge, in the exploration of which unaided reason 
could make little progress, True repentance can 
be portrayed only by him who has felt it. Homer 
could have composed the fifty-first Psalm no more 
than he could have searched with omniscient ken 
the secrets of stranger hearts. None, unless him- 
self a penitent, could vie with the son of Jesse in 
the delineation of penitence. The simple, the 
graphic, the soul-touching words, "And the Lord 
turned and looked upon Peter" — " And Peter went 
out and wept bitterly," flowed not from the pen of 
a conscious and callous deceiver. 

In the trial of our Lord, the conduct and decla- 
rations of the Roman governor form memorable 
incidents. He was not ignorant that the prisoner 
claimed to be the Christ, the King of the Jews, the 
Son of God. Yet at the close of the trial, Pilate 
pronounced him a "just person," and sought to 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 165 

cleanse himself, by the ablution of his hands, from 
the stain of innocent blood. He would not have 
bestowed on the prisoner that honorable and high 
appellation, had he thought him an errant and blas- 
pheming impostor, deluding earth and affronting 
heaven by false pretensions to divine titles and at- 
tributes. Pilate must, therefore, have held that the 
victim of Jewish malignancy was above the grade 
of mortality. On no other supposition could he 
have pronounced him a "just person." 

The trial is replete with other circumstances 
corroborative of the belief of Pilate, that the ac- 
cused was of celestial birth. It was this belief, 
and not any sentiment of compassion, that induced 
the hesitancy and vacillation of the profligate and 
iron-hearted judge. Pity never touched the un- 
feeling soul of Pilate. But even he stood appalled 
at the thought of condemning to crucifixion an in- 
carnate Deity. Hence his reiterated appeals to 
the populace, pressing the innocency of Jesus, and 
urging them to ask his release. Hence his appli- 
cations to the prisoner himself, to explain who and 
whence he was. Hence his effort to cast upon 
Herod the responsibility of an acquittal or condem- 
nation. When the Jews recalled his attention to 
the avowal of Jesus that he was the Son of God, 



166 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



Pilate became "the more afraid." The dream of 
his wife confirmed his apprehensions : and it was 
not until hundreds of infuriated voices had threat- 
ened the vengeance of Caesar, in case he should 
dare to liberate a rival claimant to sovereignty, 
that he finally delivered the accused to his fate. 
His consciousness of official delinquencies rendered 
him peculiarly fearful of the scrutiny of his imperial 
master. 

The belief entertained by the Roman judge that 
his prisoner was of heavenly origin, rested on rea- 
sons of pressing cogency. Pilate had for many 
years been procurator of Judea. He was familiar 
with the accounts of the wonderful works predicated 
of Jesus of Nazareth. He had ample means of 
ascertaining whether the alleged miracles were 
real or simulated, and could not have been mistaken 
in their character. If they were real, they demon- 
strated the divine powers of him who wrought 
them. If they w r ere simulated, they proved him a 
public cheat. Upon the supposition of their falsity, 
Pilate would not have declared to the Jewish mul- 
titude, "I am innocent of the blood of this just 
person ; see ye to it." Nor can we suppose that 
the responsive imprecation, " His blood be on us 
and on our children," would have entailed the curse 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 167 

of heaven upon the whole Hebrew race for more 
than eighteen centuries, had the central cross of 
Calvary been crimsoned from the veins of a mere 
impostor. The mien of the accused must have in- 
spired the Roman procurator with awe. His very 
look had made its way to the heart of the denying 
apostle. His whole demeanor was unearthly; his 
meekness, his patience, his silence when speaking 
might have saved his life, pertained not to the 
sphere of humanity. He acted, he spoke, he looked 
the God; eclipsed indeed, but not wholly concealed 
by the covering of flesh. 

Unbelief has never, to our knowledge, attempted 
to impeach the evangelical accounts of the conduct 
and declarations of the Roman governor at the 
trial of Jesus Christ. At least three of the Gospels 
were published before the generation to which Pi- 
late belonged had passed away. At the times of 
their publication, many were, doubtless, alive who 
had been personally present at the trial, and were 
hostile to the new religion. Unfaithfulness in the 
history of public proceedings, of such recent date 
and absorbing interest, would have been closely 
followed by exposure and indignant reprobation. 

Candor is a twin sister of truth. The unaffected 
and inimitable candor displayed by the evangelists 



168 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



in the relation of their Master's trial are strong con- 
firmations of its verity. The outrages, which 
caused the quaking of the firm-seated earth, and the 
obscuration of the luminary of day, they recounted 
in language simple, ingenuous and unimpassioned. 
No vestige of prejudice or partiality is to be found 
in these narratives. The disciples of Jesus recip- 
rocated naught of the rancor of the chief priests 
and elders. They stated the actings and doings of 
the time-serving Pilate without the slighest inter- 
mixture of vituperative comment. They left the 
traitor Judas to the scorpion stings of his own con- 
science, and, sparing of human maledictions, con- 
signed him to the retributions of eternity. 

The crucifixion of Jesus Christ was the last scene 
of his humiliation. It appears from the Sacred 
Record, that he spoke seven times after being nailed 
to the cross. He declared to the penitent thief, 
"Verily I say unto thee, to-day thou shalt be with 
me in paradise." He said to the weeping Mary 
and to the beloved disciple respectively, " Woman 
behold thy son ;" Son, " Behold thy mother." The 
following ejaculations also burst from his agonized 
lips : " Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
they do;" "I thirst;" "My God, my God, why hast 
thou forsaken me;" "Father into thy hands I 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 169 

commend my spirit ;" " It is finished." The order 
of his expiring declarations is not distinctly stated 
in the inspired pages. If these were, indeed, the 
last words of Jesus Christ, they prove beyond per- 
adventure that he was not an impostor. No im- 
postor ever spoke and died as he is represented to 
have spoken and died. Well might the centurion 
who " stood over against him and saw that he so 
cried out and gave up the ghost," exclaim, " Truly 
this man was the Son of God."* 

Infidelity can elude the demonstration imparted 
by the scene of the cross only by the bold affirma- 
tion that it was a sheer fabrication. But how 
could profligate counterfeiters have conceived such 
a scene ? Its elements were not derived from the 
previous realities of human life. Until the death of 
Christ no martyr ever prayed for his murderers. 
That was a prodigy to which the Gospel gave birth. 
The pathetic exclamation, " My God, my, God why 
hast thou forsaken me?" referred not to the de- 
livery of his person into the hands of his enemies ; 
for he had declared upon his arrest, that he could 
pray to his Father, who would presently send him 
more than twelve legions of angels. It was his 



* Mark xv. 39. 
8 



170 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



spirit that was forsaken of his God. The wailing 
sent forth from the cross was induced, not by the 
scoffings or scourgings or spittings, nor yet by the 
lacerating irons. It was spiritual bereavement and 
dismay that overwhelmed the Sufferer. 

If the writers of the Gospel were its fabricators, 
they must have been the vilest of men. But how 
could such men have conceived the fact that a holy 
being lives upon the light of God's countenance, 
and is cast into the depths of despair if that light is 
withdrawn ? Such fact, though true as heaven, is 
beyond the sphere of mortal imagination. Had the 
high-reaching Plato, instead of his perfect common- 
wealth, attempted to portray a perfect hero of 
theological romance, he might have conducted him 
through all the trials to which flesh is heir, and 
finally crowned him with the martyrdom of the 
cross ; but even his sublime fancy could not have 
thrown into the fable the unearthly thought that 
the loss of the light of God's countenance is the 
acme of suffering. Such a thought pertains not to 
uninspired and unregenerate humanity. The car- 
nal heart knows nothing — dreams nothing — of the 
ineffable light of the divine countenance, and con- 
sequently nothing of the unutterable anguish caused 
by its loss. 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 



171 



The terms " It is finished/' pronounced by the 
Sufferer on Calvary, embodied thoughts which the 
uninspired mind could not have grasped. They 
reached and pervaded infinitude. It was the Infi- 
nite who uttered them. They were the last words 
of the tragedy of redemption. What was "fin- 
ished ?''" The extermination of the empire of dark- 
ness was " finished." The temple of salvation for 
perishing mortals was " finished." The most glori- 
ous structure ever reared by omnipotent power 
was '■'finished.'' The throes and agonies of the 
Son of God were ,; finished." 

We have thus in the present chapter and the 
two which immediately precede it, sought to show 
that the character of the Christ of the Gospel could 
not have been conceived and delineated by any un- 
aided effort of the human mind. The proofs of the 
position seem to be irresistible. Should, however, 
any timid inquirer after truth incline to believe 
that it is too broadly stated, it might be narrowed 
down, without impairing its force, to the affirmation 
that bad men could not have conceived and deline- 
ated the character. Thus modified, the position 
cannot but command the acquiescence of the most 
hesitating inquirer, unless he unfortunately fails in 
the article of candor. In the character of Jesus 



172 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

Christ godliness is the chief element. The signifi- 
cation of godliness has been familiar to the christian 
of every age and clime. It is written on the tablet 
of his heart. But bad men are as ignorant of godli- 
ness as a blind man is of colors. It is not palpable 
to carnal vision — it is spiritually discerned. A bad 
man could conceive and depict the life of godliness 
in all its varied yet harmonious hues, including its 
outward demonstrations and inward exercises, no 
more than a man blind from his birth could con- 
ceive and depict the lights and shades of the ever- 
changing, ever-glorious landscape. 

Had bad men, without the lamp of Revelation, 
formed a god for themselves, the idol of their crea- 
tion would have resembled but dimly the august 
Ancient of Days. And had they, by the mere light 
of nature, attempted to form a saviour of the world, 
their fabricated redeemer would have borne a still 
less similitude to our Lord Jesus Christ. A mes- 
siah of profane fiction would have approximated 
scarcely in semblance the " Holy Thing" born of 
the virgin. It would not, like Him, have endured 
with meekness and patient magnanimity the sweat 
of labor and the sweat of blood. The offspring of 
human passion, pride, and malignancy must have 
betrayed some marks of its earthly parentage in the 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 173 

palace of the high priest, at the judgment-seat of 
Pilate, or in the hall of Herod, with body scourged, 
and face spit upon, and head lacerated with the 
crown of thorns. It could not by mortal arts have 
been made to suffer and to die as the Son of God 
suffered and died. 

We are, then, to conclude that bad men could 
not have conceived and delineated the character of 
Jesus Christ. And the conclusion is equally irre- 
sistible that good men would not have banded to- 
gether to concoct and disseminate a wicked and 
impious imposture. That good men forged the 
story of redeeming love is, indeed, a supposition 
that infidelity has never had the hardihood to advo- 
cate. It may thus be recognized as an everlasting 
truth, that good men would not have fabricated, if 
they could, the character of our blessed Saviour, 
and that bad men could not have done it if they 
would. 

We close our remarks upon the character, trial, 
and crucifixion of Jesus Christ, by subjoining a 
memorable passage from the writings of the unbe- 
lieving and profligate Rousseau. In the bosom of 
the Genevan philosopher was deeply implanted a 
sensibility to the charms of truth, which neither 
the blighting frosts of skepticism, nor the poisonous 



174 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

influences of a dissolute life, could utterly extin- 
guish. It burst forth from its smouldering ruins 
in the following sublime eulogy of the Gospel and 
its divine Founder : — 

"I will confess to you," says the infidel associate of 
Hume, " that the majesty of the scriptures strikes me with 
admiration, as the purity of the gospel hath its influence 
on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers 
with all their pomp of diction; how mean, how con- 
temptible are they, compared with the scriptures! Is it 
possible that a book, at once so simple and sublime, 
should be merely the work of man ? Is it possible that 
the sacred personage, whose history it contains, should 
be himself a mere man? Do we find that he assumed 
the tone of an enthusiast or ambitious sectary? What 
sweetness, what purity in his manner! What an affect- 
ing gracefulness in his delivery ! What sublimity in 
his maxims ! What profound wisdom in his discourses ! 
What presence of mind, what subtlety, what truth in his 
replies ! How great the command over his passions ! 
Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so 
live, and so die, without weakness and without ostentation ? 
When Plato describes his imaginary good man, loaded with 
all the punishments of guilt, yet meriting the highest re- 
wards of virtue, he describes exactly the character of Jesus 
Christ : the resemblance was so striking, that all the fathers 
perceived it. What prepossession, wb at blindness must it be, 
to compare the son of Sophroniscus to the son of Mary ! 
What an infinite disproportion there is between them ! 



THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 175 



Socrates, dying without pain or ignominy, easily supported 
his character to the last ; and if his death, however easy, 
had not crowned his life, it might have been doubted 
whether Socrates, with all his wisdom, was anything more 
than a mere sophist. He invented, it is said, the theory of 
morals. Others, however, had before put them in practice ; 
he had only to say, therefore, what they had done, and to 
reduce their examples to precepts. Aristides had been just, 
before Socrates denned justice ; Leonidas had given up his 
life for his country, before Socrates declared patriotism to 
be a duty; the Spartans were a sober people before 
Socrates recommended sobriety ; before he had even de- 
fined virtue, Greece abounded in virtuous men. But where 
could Jesus learn among his cotemporaries, that pure and 
sublime morality, of which he only hath given us both pre- 
cept and example ? The greatest wisdom was made known 
amongst the most bigoted fanaticism, and the simplicity of 
the most heroic virtues did honor to the vilest people on 
earth. The death of Socrates peaceably philosophizing 
with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could be 
wished for ; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst of agoni- 
zing pains, abused, insulted and accused by a whole nation, 
is the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates in re- 
ceiving the cup of poison, blessed indeed the weeping exe- 
cutioner who administered it ; but Jesus in the midst of 
excruciating tortures, prayed for his merciless tormentors. 
Yes, if the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, 
the life and death of Jesus are those of a God. Shall we 
suppose the evangelical history a mere fiction ? Indeed, 
my friend, it bears not the marks of fiction : on the con- 



176 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

trary, the history of Socrates, which nobody presumes to 
doubt, is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such 
a supposition, in fact, only shifts the difficulty without obvi- 
ating it ; it is more inconceivable that a number of persons 
should agree to write such a history, than that one should 
furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were inca- 
pable of the diction, and strangers to the morality con- 
tained in the gospel; the marks of whose truth are so 
striking and inimitable, that the inventor would be a more 
astonishing character than the hero." 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE MIRACLES OF THE GOSPEL. 

Miracles of Christianity internal proofs of divinity — Science of jurid- 
ical evidence applied to christian history — Writers of Gospel 
not deceived — Miracles palpable to senses — Abiding in effects — 
Infallible — No collusion — Open and public — Continued for years 
in presence of friends and foes — Writers of Gospel had good sense 
and sound understanding — Deposed from personal knowledge — 
Paul knew with certainty whether miracles of his conversion and 
those wrought by himself were real — Writers of Gospel eight in 
number — Testimonies equivalent to judicial depositions. 

The miracles of the Gospel have been generally- 
classed among its external evidences. We cannot 
perceive the propriety of that classification. Of 
the christian prodigies, the Gospel is the only pri- 
mary record ; of their reality, the evangelical wri- 
ters are the only original witnesses whose deposi- 
tions survive to the present day. Instead of being 
extraneous, its miracles constitute integral parts of 
the New Testament. The scriptural accounts of 
the sayings of Jesus Christ are universally ac- 
knowledged to belong to the internal evidences of 
Christianity ; the scriptural accounts of the doings 

of Jesus Christ are testimonials alike internal. It 

8* 



178 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



is the Gospel itself that proves the sublime theism 
and the pure ethics taught by the Prophet of Naza- 
reth, so indicative of his divinity ; it is the Gospel 
itself that also proves his wonderful works, so dem- 
onstrative that he was the Son of God. The con- 
firmations derived from foreign sources constitute 
the external evidences of our holy religion. 

It would be irrelevant to our argument to discuss 
the abstract question whether a miracle must nec- 
essarily, and in all cases, verify the dogma it is 
designed to uphold. Such discussion would gra- 
tuitously bring under review the cases of the Egyp- 
tian magicians, and of the sorceress of Endor, with 
other scriptural passages seeming to countenance 
the existence of "lying wonders." It is enough 
for our purpose that the sole tendency of the Gos- 
pel is to promote the glory of God, the holiness of 
man, the discomfiture of the powers of darkness. 
For the authentication of such a system of faith 
and of ethics, evil demons would not work miracles 
if they could. It would display a "kingdom di- 
vided against itself/' If genuine, the christian 
miracles must have been from above ; they are to 
be deemed the broad seals of heaven to the Gos- 
pel's truth. 

The science of evidence is an important depart- 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



179 



ment of human knowledge. It consists not merely 
of artificial rules ; its foundations are deeply laid 
in the immutable principles of nature. It is the 
Archimedean machinery of juridical tribunals for 
the development of truth. On its due application 
depend property, liberty, and* life. It has been the 
subject of assiduous culture ever since the dawn 
of civilization. The improvements of successive 
centuries were consolidated in the code of the Ro- 
man Justinian. That imperial code has descended 
to modern ages, the richest treasure of antiquity. 
The vigor of the Celtic mind has raised the science 
of proof to a height of perfection unattained even 
by the learned efforts of the former mistress of the 
world. In the judicatories organized under the 
common law of our fatherland, and especially in 
that department of the temple of justice dedicated 
to trials by jury, it forms, perhaps, the noblest sys- 
tem of practical wisdom of which humanity can 
boast. When administered by learned judges and 
honest jurymen, it is an almost infallible means of 
detecting error in all its Protean forms. The final 
triumph of untruth in tribunals thus constituted, is 
a phenomenon scarcely witnessed in a lifetime. 
We purpose to invoke from civil courts those prin- 
ciples of evidence which have been matured by the 



180 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



experience of thousands of years, and to apply 
them to the sacred theme of the Christian miracles. 

When we open the New Testament, we find it 
replete with marvels. " Great is the mystery of 
godliness," whether applied to its doctrines or to its 
facts. The Gospel recounts the incarnation of the 
Son of God ; the miraculous healing of all manner 
of diseases ; the resuscitation of the dead, and the 
controlling of the elements by a brief mandate ; the 
feeding with a few loaves and fishes famished hosts. 
It speaks of the preternatural darkening of the sun, 
and rending of the rocks, and quaking of the earth ; 
it affirms the resurrection of Jesus Christ ; it pro- 
claims the visible ascension of the second person of 
the Trinity, and the stupendous descent of the 
third ; it ascribes to the early heralds of the cross 
the faculty, taught them in no earthly school, of 
speaking strange languages as their mother tongue. 

In the grand issue between Christianity and un- 
belief, the advocates of the Gospel confessedly hold 
the affirmative. On them devolves what is termed 
in Latin the onus probandi, and in English the 
burden of proof. As the events recorded in the 
New Testament are extraordinary, they require to 
be confirmed by extraordinary evidence. Man is 
a reasonable being ; and the Author of his mental 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



181 



faculties does not exact his homage to any creed 
without proof of its truth. When the intellect has 
within its grasp due testimonials that the creed is 
inspired, then, and not until then, is reason bound 
to yield the sceptre to confiding and unhesitating 
faith. Let not the sensitive believer startle at the 
latitude of these concessions. Pure gold dreads not 
the crucible ; the more trying the ordeal the clearer 
will be the demonstration of its genuineness. 

We ask not the student of truth to yield cre- 
dence to the christian miracles without thorough 
examination. We ask him to test them by the 
sound principles of evidence, which from time im- 
memorial have been judicially sanctioned by the 
wisdom of the civilized world. Can he find a bet- 
ter test than those principles upon which he daily 
and confidently reposes his fortune, his liberty, his 
life ? If he will apply to the miracles of the Gospel 
this practical touchstone, with the diligence and 
candor displayed by ordinary jurymen in the in- 
vestigation of secular truth, he will reach the con- 
clusion that they are the genuine seals of heaven, 
with a certainty of conviction not inferior to the 
full assurance wrought by the demonstrations of 
.mathematics. In the present chapter, we purpose 
to show by the rules of proof, matured by the keen- 



182 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

sighted skill of enlightened self-interest, and grown 
gray under the frost of ages, that the evangelical 
witnesses could not have been innocently mistaken 
in their attestation to the christian signs and won- 
ders. In the next two chapters, we design to show 
that they were not wilful deceivers. From these 
premises clearly established, the conclusion will be 
inevitable that the Gospel is true. Our argument 
develops itself under several heads. 

First. — When a witness in a civil tribunal testi- 
fies to strange events, the triers spontaneously in- 
quire, at least in their own minds, whether the na- 
ture and character of the events, or their attending 
circumstances, may not possibly have beguiled the 
witness into innocent mistake. Man is prone to 
illusions; his imagination is a prolific source of 
error; even his graver faculties are not always 
faithful in their allegiance. Let the student of the 
christian evidences adopt for himself the sponta- 
neous inquiry of the juridical triers, and rigidly 
apply it to the testimonies of the evangelical wit- 
nesses. He will find that the possibility of their 
being deceived was utterly precluded by the na- 
ture, character, and circumstances of the christian 
miracles. They could have been mistaken in the 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



183 



reality of the supernatural signs and wonders no 
more than the eye can be mistaken in the existence 
of light. 

The miracles of the Gospel appealed, not to the 
imagination, but to the senses and the judgment. 
Though wrought by a simple word or touch, their 
effects were abiding. They came, indeed, with the 
lightning's speed ; but they passed not away like 
the lightning's flash. The five thousand fed by the 
five loaves and two small fishes were assured, not 
only by their sight, but also by their appeased hun- 
ger, that the miracle was no delusion. The blind, 
the lame, and the diseased were restored to the 
vigor of unfaltering health, fearless of relapse. The 
three dead persons, raised to life by Jesus Christ 
before his own decease, mingled again in social in- 
tercourse, and remained, perhaps for many years, 
living, moving, speaking prodigies, at which the 
world gazed, and wondered, and trembled. 

The remedies of the mighty Physician were not 
experiments, sometimes successful, oftener failing. 
His applications were sovereign and infallible. 
Disease was always submissive to his mandate ; 
never failing was his restorative touch. At his 
command death ever willingly yielded up its vic- 
tims. Devils never refused to depart at his bidding. 



184 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



He had but to speak the word, and the light of in- 
telligence straightway shed its gladdening beams 
upon the minds of the demented. 

To suppose collusion between the great Healer 
and his patients, and that they affected to be dis- 
eased that they might seem to be cured, would 
imply a conspiracy of thousands without motive or 
object, reaching through the whole time and limits 
of his public ministration. To such collusion 
neither the dead nor the demented could have been 
parties. And among the living and sane, the sup- 
posed confederation, bound together by no principle 
of cohesion, could not, if it escaped exposure by in- 
ternal treason, have eluded the scrutiny of foreign 
foes. Witness the vigilance with which the phari- 
sees probed the case of the man born blind, whom 
Jesus restored to sight by anointing his eyes with 
clay, and sending him to wash in the pool of Siloam. 
If the Jewish sanhedrim lavished thirty pieces of 
silver to effect the arrest of the Son of man, how 
profuse would have been their expenditure to secure 
his disgraceful detection ! Had Iscariot any secret 
frauds to reveal, he might have become rich by the 
disclosure, without being driven by despair to lay 
murderous hands upon himself. 

The miracles of Jesus Christ sought not " the 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



185 



shade of guilt-concealing night," but were as open 
and almost as diffused as the light of day. They 
were publicly wrought at Jerusalem, and in every 
city and village of Judea. Between forty and fifty 
of them are named by the evangelical historians ; 
and their oft-repeated allusion to divers other mir- 
acles not named, indicates that their aggregate 
number must have been almost countless. They 
were continued for three years, and fearlessly dis- 
played in the presence of friends and foes. Of the 
wonderful works, the constituted authorities of the 
land were the ever vigilant, the ever hostile super- 
visors. The infuriated scribes and pharisees be- 
held, and wondered, and reviled ; not daring, in the 
face of an astonished nation, to controvert the fact 
of the miracles, they impiously ascribed them to de- 
moniac arts. 

Secondly. — When a witness in a court of justice 
testifies to events peculiarly strange and wonderful, 
the questions, whether he is of healthful mind; 
whether his evidence is based on his own personal 
knowledge; and whether he had sure means of ac- 
curately learning the certainty of the events narra- 
ted, will pass in careful review before the candid, 
discreet and intelligent triers. To the student of 



186 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



the christian evidences we commend the invocation 
of these questions, and their close and solemn ap- 
plication to the testimonies of the sacred witnesses. 
The deeper he lays the foundations of his faith, the 
firmer and more immovable will be the super- 
structure. 

The works of an author reflect his intellectual 
lineaments as the glass reflects the features of his 
countenance. In the evangelical works good sense, 
sound understanding and practical wisdom are pre- 
dominant elements. They must, therefore, have 
been the predominant elements in the mental con- 
stitutions of the writers. Infidelity, in affirming 
that the Gospel is a fabrication, ascribes to its 
authors a still higher intellectual grade. If the 
Evangelical Record is a romance, it is the most 
wonderful achievement of mortal genius. If not 
inspired by heaven, it possesses such an earthly in- 
spiration as never breathed forth in the pages of 
Homer or Shakspeare. In spite of the opposition 
of power and the cavils of unbelief, it has extended 
its moral sceptre over the whole civilized world. 
Its lineaments are all so godlike, that for a long 
course of centuries the best and the wisest of man- 
kind have clung to it as the noblest work of God, 
with a faith lasting as life, and brightening even in 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



187 



the dying hour. Be the Gospel a matchless fiction, 
or a glorious reality, it bears internal demonstration 
that its writers were too intellectual and clear- 
sighted to become themselves the victims of delu- 
sion. 

In narrating the christian miracles, the evangel- 
ical writers deposed not from hearsay merely, but 
from their own personal knowledge. Matthew, in- 
dicated by the unanimous voice of christian anti- 
quity as the composer of the sacred history which 
bears his name, was one of the apostolic twelve. 
John announces that he himself was the disciple who 
leaned on the bosom of Jesus. We believe that 
Mark and Luke were of the chosen seventy. Mark 
wrote several years after Matthew. His work ap- 
pears as an original composition, founded on his 
own knowledge. Had it been but an abridgment 
of his predecessor, or the mere gleanings of hearsay, 
the candor of Mark would have been likely to give 
some intimation to that effect. Why should he 
have abridged the already condensed work of Mat- 
thew? Why should he have placed his hearsay 
gatherings in competition with the personal recol- 
lections of an original apostle ? The passion of 
authorship found no place in the occupied mind of 
the holy Mark. To say that he was inspired by 



188 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



the Holy Ghost would at once solve the difficulty. 
But that would be begging the question at issue 
between infidelity and ourselves. 

The same remarks apply to Luke, who also 
wrote years after Matthew, though before John. 
But it has been said that the introduction of Luke's 
Gospel announces that he had no personal knowl- 
edge of the events which he narrates. We do not 
concur in this interpretation. In the first two 
verses of his introduction, he refers to "many" 
who had " taken in hand to set forth in order" the 
miracles of salvation delivered by those who " from 
the beginning were eye-witnesses." The " many" 
(Matthew not included) had doubtless written from 
hearsay, and their writings have passed into mer- 
ited oblivion. In contrast to these writings based 
on hearsay, Luke, in the third verse, speaks of his 
own design ; " It seemed good to me also, having 
had perfect understanding of all things from the 
very first, to write unto thee in order, most excel- 
lent Theophilus." How could he have had a 
" perfect understanding of all things from the very 
first," unless he had been an eye and an ear wit- 
ness of them? In the fourth verse, he declares 
one of his objects in writing to be, that his friend 
might " know the certainty of those things." But 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 189 

how could Theophilus know their certainty from 
the epistle of his correspondent, unless that cor- 
respondent had himself personal knowledge of their 
truth ? When just after the ascension, the eleven 
disciples selected two candidates for the apostolic 
office, left vacant by the treason and death of Ju- 
das, they were careful to name persons who had 
been followers of Jesus Christ even from the bap- 
tism of John, that one of them might be ordained 
to be a witness with the original disciples of his 
resurrection.* And was it not equally important 
that those who were to prepare and publish, for the 
benefit of cotemporaries and posterity, written at- 
testations of his teachings and works, should have 
had personal acquaintance with them from the very 
beginning ? 

All the sacred biographers had, we suppose, the 
most ample means of ascertaining the truth of the 
events which they have recorded. Matthew and 
John belonged to the family of Jesus Christ ; Mark 
and Luke had been followers in his train, intently 
gazing on his wonderful works. In the reality of 
those works, they could have been mistaken no 
more than in their own identity. It was not in- 



* Acts i. 21, 22. 



190 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

formation, but vision, which taught them that the 
blind eyes had been opened, the lepers cleansed, 
the fevers assuaged, the winds and the waves 
hushed, the devils cast out, by words of human 
sound but of power divine. And how could the 
evangelical biographers have been deceived in the 
resuscitation of the widow's son, of the ruler's 
daughter, and of the brother of Mary and Martha ? 
They had seen the inanimate remains ; the cold 
seal of death was not to be mistaken. They saw 
again the rigid limbs beginning ' to move ; the 
glazed eye reanimated; the hueless cheek crim- 
soned with the flush of returning health. They 
afterwards sat at supper with the restored Lazarus, 
where the Jews assembled in crowds to behold one 
who had been raised from the dead. 

The resurrection of Jesus Christ was the last act 
in the drama of redemption. His disciples had 
gazed on his crucifixion ; they had beheld his hands 
and feet nailed to the tree ; the fatal spear had in 
their sight pierced his side ; they had witnessed his 
interment ; the granite tomb had been watched by 
a guard of Roman soldiers, and sealed with the seal 
of the Jewish sanhedrim. Yet on the third day he 
appeared to his disciples in the vigor of renovated 
life; he showed himself alive to them and often 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



191 



conversed with them for forty successive days ; he 
displayed to them his wounded hands and pierced 
side ; their eyes saw him, their ears heard him ; 
their hands handled him ; he wrought miracles in 
their presence ; at the end of the forty days they 
beheld him ascend to heaven, and a cloud received 
him out of their sight. None could have person- 
ated the Crucified with the hope of deceiving his 
very disciples. His disciples could have been 
mistaken in their belief of having seen him after 
his resurrection, no more than they could have 
been mistaken in their belief of having seen him 
before. They were not predisposed to credulity. 
Didymus was not the only doubter ; Jesus himself 
reproved their general unbelief. The accuracy of 
the senses of the eleven was tested by the senses 
of others ; the risen Saviour appeared to more than 
five hundred at one time. The heathen, Tacitus, 
unwittingly bore testimony to the truth of the res- 
urrection. For what else could have caused the 
faith of the cross, seemingly interred forever in the 
tomb of Joseph, suddenly to " burst forth," and 
overspread Judea ? The wonderful resuscitation 
of the new religion demonstrates the resuscitation 
of its Founder. Had the apostolic report been 
false, the overwhelming union of Jewish and 



192 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

Roman power would have smothered it on the 
spot. 

The descent of the third person of the Trinity 
ranks in wonder with the incarnation and resur- 
rection of the second. Without the coming of the 
Comforter, the Gospel would have been but a life- 
less letter. His advent and gracious presence are 
rapturously attested by the sacred writers. The 
particular manner of his visible descent, is related 
by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles. Argument is 
not required to show that there could have been no 
mistake in the reality of the astounding demonstra- 
tions at pentecost. 

Paul, though converted after the resurrection, 
and doubtless the youngest of the apostles, was 
nevertheless a cotemporary of Jesus Christ. When 
Stephen was stoned, a few months after the ascen- 
sion, the clothes of the martyr were laid down " at 
a young man's feet, whose name was Saul and 
who even then had attained sufficient maturity of 
age to be intrusted with official authority. Bent 
on exterminating the new and hated sect, the self- 
possessed pharisee, on his way to Damascus, armed 
with letters from the high priest, was suddenly 
smitten to the ground at mid-day, by a light above 
the brightness of the sun. The light was accom- 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



193 



panied by a Voice appealing to him by name. The 
awful Voice he twice addressed ; twice the Voice 
replied; the last time at considerable length. If 
Paul was deceived, the deception could only have 
been caused by mental aberration. But aberration 
of the intellect would not have produced physical 
blindness ; and he of Tarsus was three days with- 
out sight. If the whole was but the complicated 
development of a strange insanity, the malady must 
have been contagious ; for his companions saw the 
light and fell to the earth, and heard the Voice, 
though they understood not the words. 

Further corroboration of the reality of the won- 
derful phenomena, is found in the independent rev- 
elation to Ananias. The saint of Damascus af- 
firmed, that the Lord had appeared to him in a 
vision, informing him of the mid-day prodigies, and 
sending him to the relief of the sightless penitent. 
Entering the house where Paul was lodged, he laid 
his hands upon the blind man, " And immediately 
there fell from his eyes as it had been scales ; and 
he received sight forthwith, and arose and was 
baptized." The falling scales and the instanta- 
neous restoration of the visual organs to health, 
upon the touch of the holy man, were palpable and 

tangible wonders, which no trick of fancy or men- 
9 



194 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

tal illusion could have produced. Paul was not 
deceived. Either the miracles were real, or else 
the pupil of Gamaliel, and his companions on the 
way, and the pious Ananias, were all banded to- 
gether in a foul conspiracy. 

Paul claimed that he himself was endowed with 
the gift of miracles and of tongues. Did the power 
to work signs and wonders exist in his "mind's 
eye" alone ? Was he deceived when he thought 
that, by a look, he had smitten the sorcerer with 
blindness ? Was his belief that by a word he had 
cured the man lame from his mother's womb, so 
that he leaped and walked, mere self-deception ? 
Did he but imagine that he had cast out the evil 
spirit which tormented the possessed damsel ? Did 
he but dream that he had raised to life the young 
man fallen down from the third story and taken up 
dead ? Was it fancy that pictured the poisonous 
viper fastened on his hand and shaken off without 
harm ? And his gift of tongues — was that too the 
mere creation of a disordered mind>? Was it in 
thought alone that he traversed the ancient world, 
preaching to each nation and tribe, in its own 
strange dialect, the " good tidings of great joy." 

The apostle to the gentiles was not a person to be 
habitually deceived. Though ardent, he was col- 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



195 



lected ; to a glowing heart he united a clear head. 
Brilliant as was his imagination, it served as a wil- 
ling handmaid to his intellect. Profound as was 
his learning, it was controlled by a dominant in- 
fusion of plain and practical good sense. In him 
were harmoniously united the man of the world 
and the man of God. Antiquity produced no one 
less likely to become the dupe of deception than 
the tent-maker of Corinth. 

The apostolic claim to the possession and exer- 
cise of miraculous powers and to the gift of 
tongues, w T as not confined to Paul. In speaking 
without exception of the early missionaries of sal- 
vation, he himself says, " God also bearing them 
witness both with signs and wonders, and with 
divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost." This 
claim to preternatural endowments, unless true, 
must have been intentionally fraudulent ; it could 
not have been the effect of innocent delusion. 
There can be no pretence that the whole apostolic 
band were madmen ; their writings bear record 
demonstration of their general sanity. 

There is, indeed, a limited yet insidious disease 
of the intellect, termed monomania, which consists 
in partial derangement of some one faculty, or in 
mental aberration upon some one subject. A mo- 



196 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

nomaniac might possibly have imagined for a time 
that he was the worker of miracles. But such an 
hallucination could never have become an epi- 
demic, pervading an entire class, affecting each 
individual with the same identical symptoms, and 
continuing for a succession of years. The gift of 
tongues would have been an endowment peculiarly 
difficult to be lastingly imagined. A few experi- 
ments and failures would have been sure to dis- 
solve the illusion. 

The christian record bears no mark of apostolic 
hallucination. Its writers, and the faithful of whom 
they wrote, were strangers to the influences of wild 
enthusiasm ; they betrayed no indications of an over- 
heated imagination ; they maintained a healthful 
tranquillity even where excitement might have been 
expected. Primitive Christianity was not more dis- 
tinguished for its zeal than for its equanimity. Not 
a fanatic appeared in its pious groups. The ebulli- 
tions of extravagant rhapsody find no countenance 
in the example of the meek, the serene, the unim- 
passioned Jesus. Not akin to religious frenzy was 
the defection of Peter, or the skepticism of Thomas. 
Not symptomatic of a diseased intellect was the 
cool, the collected, the sublime heroism of Ste- 
phen. 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



197 



Thirdly. — In estimating the chances of miscon- 
ception by witnesses, the triers in a court of judi- 
cature always regard their number. This is a rule 
of evidence not only sanctioned by the wisdom of 
ages, but also founded in the common principles of 
our nature. Several witnesses are incomparably 
less liable than one to an error of the senses. The 
difference depends not so much on the power of 
numbers as on a sort of moral arithmetic. The 
senses of one man may sometimes beguile him ; 
but the concurrence of many in affirming the 
same fact of which they have been eye or ear 
witnesses, almost precludes the practicability of 
mistake. 

These considerations must not be undervalued 
by the investigator of the christian evidences. 
There are eight writers of the Gospel ; Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James, Peter, and Jude. 
Some of these writers enter less than others into 
the detail of the scriptural signs and wonders ; but 
even James, Peter, and Jude virtually affirm the in- 
carnation, death, and resurrection of the Son of 
God ; and these three events constitute the triple 
foundation of our faith. To the christian miracles 
in some stages of their development, each of the 
evangelical writers was a personal witness; and 
9* 



198 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



his means of learning the facts were ample and in- 
fallible. Mistake was impossible. 

The testimonials of the sacred writers have all 
the attributes of depositions, and may well receive 
that imposing name. They were at least equiva- 
lent in sanction to oaths in a court of justice. That 
which gives its binding force to judicial depositions 
is the appeal of the deponents to the Searcher of 
hearts. The evangelical deponents also appealed 
to the Searcher of hearts ; and their appeal was 
made under every circumstance of solemnity that 
could bind the consciences of responsible beings. 
They virtually invoked upon themselves the bless- 
ing or the curse of God, as their asseverations were 
true or false. If the scriptural depositions are false, 
the writers were guilty of moral perjury, unequalled 
in turpitude by any legal perjury ever perpetrated 
on earth. They deliberately insulted the Majesty 
of heaven; and have deceived, not an individual 
only, but a world ! 

Under the juridical systems founded on the com- 
mon law, one witness is generally sufficient to sus- 
tain an affirmative. Fortunes are daily lost and 
gained, and lives forfeited or saved, upon the 
strength of a single oath. The Jewish code re- 
quired two affirmants ; but two affirmants fully 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



199 



satisfied even the rigor of the Mosaic institution. 
The Gospel has benignly afforded to the feeble faith 
of mortals the benefit of eight original and concur- 
ring witnesses. This feature in its authentication 
should be profoundly estimated by the honest stu- 
dent of the christian proofs. Who, sitting in the 
seat of a juryman, would gratuitously take upon 
himself the responsibility of discrediting eight con- 
curring and uncontradicted witnesses, swearing 
positively to things which their own eyes had seen 
or their own ears heard ? 

Man would be an isolated and miserable being if 
he could repose no confidence in testimony, judi- 
cial and extrajudicial. Faith in human testimony 
is the solace of life, the cement of commerce, the 
gravitating principle which binds together the moral 
elements of the world. Burst it asunder and sub- 
stitute in its stead the distrust of each in the assev- 
erations of all, and our race must relapse into the 
original chaos from whence it was redeemed by the 
consolidations of society. The light of day might 
as well be extinguished as faith in human testimony. 
Universal darkness w T ould not be more appalling 
than the universal domination of heartless, cheer- 
less skepticism. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 

Writers of Gospel not deceivers — Truth has a manner of its own — 
Directness, simplicity, and ingenuousness of evangelical witnesses 
— Examples of their candor — Pureness of their moral character 
— Proved by their writings — By history — By the confessions of 
infidels — Had not primitive christians been of pure character, new 
faith would not have outlived its Founder — Writers of Gospel 
consistent in narratives, doctrines, and precepts, without studied 
uniformity. 

Having shown in the last chapter, that the wri- 
ters of the Gospel could not have been innocently 
deceived in the christian miracles, we now proceed 
to show that they were not wilful deceivers. For 
this object we shall, as in the last chapter, resort to 
those juridical balances, whose accuracy in weigh- 
ing testimony has been tested by the experience of 
ages. It it be true that sometimes "the children 
of this world are in their generation wiser than the 
children of light,"* and if it be also true that the 
judicial generations have from the beginning lived 
and moved, and had their being in cultivating and 



* Luke xvi. 8. 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



201 



perfecting the science of evidence, let "the chil- 
dren of light" deign to receive, in this particular 
department, some practical lessons from " the chil- 
dren of this world." 

First. — When witnesses, in a secular court, tes- 
tify to improbable events, the triers steadfastly 
mark their manner as a criterion of their honesty. 
Truth has a manner of its own, not easy to be de- 
scribed, but instinctively felt. Successfully to 
counterfeit the truthful manner, is scarcely within 
the compass of human art. It is, indeed, declared 
that sometimes " Satan himself is transformed into 
an angel of light." But the transformation requires 
all the adroitness of the arch-fiend. A work of fic- 
tion, though drawn by the ablest of pens, may be 
distinguished by the critical and experienced from 
a narrative of facts. Paintings, however perfect, 
are not nature. The Grecian pencil beguiled 
birds ; it aspired not to beguile sagacious men. 

Let the student of the christian evidences scru- 
tinize profoundly the manner of the sacred deposi- 
tions. Among the prominent badges of the truth- 
ful manner, are directness, simplicity, and ingenu- 
ousness. These badges are engraved on every 

page of the Gospel testimonials. Take, for in- 
9* 



202 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

stance, the four histories of our Lord. The tale 
of the lisping child, to whom deceit is a stranger 
even in name, is not more direct, simple, and in- 
genuous, than the narratives of Matthew, Mark, 
Luke, and John. They bear intrinsic marks of 
being the impersonation of verity; — not its sem- 
blance chiselled out by the artist, but its original, 
breathing, speaking reality. If they are fabulous, 
the unlettered Galileans possessed a power of coun- 
terfeiting truth unequalled in the annals of the hu- 
man mind. 

Take, as another example, the defences of Paul 
before the Roman governors. What was it which 
made Felix tremble in the presence of his helpless 
prisoner ? What was it that drew forth the excla- 
mation from Festus, " Paul, thou art beside thyself ; 
much learning doth make thee mad ?" What was 
it that almost persuaded Agrippa to be a christian ? 
Fiction never developed such scenes ; none such 
are portrayed in the pages of poetic lore. Paul 
was a friendless stranger; humble, penniless, de- 
spised, chained. Yet truth had nerved his heart 
with her potency ; clothed him in her simple, ma- 
jestic robes ; imparted to him her own peculiar, in- 
effable, overpowering, godlike manner. No wonder 
that the licentious Felix trembled ; that the haughty 



THE CHKISTIAN MIRACLES. 



203 



king was shaken ; that the infidel Festus thought 
the speaker mad. The best antidote against un- 
belief is the study of the evangelical depositions. 
Had Rousseau read them with candor and humil- 
ity, he might have been healed of his morbid skep- 
ticism. "Search the Scriptures," is the counsel 
of him who spoke as never man spoke. It was the 
prescription for the heart by the great Physician 
who made it, and knew all its maladies and their 
cures. 

Artlessness is the garb of truth. Fiction, if it 
would pass for verity, must counterfeit that garb. 
Nor could the disguise be long concealed. Be- 
tween the simulated and the natural, the discerning 
eye will soon discover the distinction. Nothing 
can surpass in genuine artlessness the evangelical 
writers. They employed no stratagem to gain 
credence. The thought of being disbelieved seems 
not to have entered their simple imaginations. 
Overwhelmed themselves by the absorbing truth 
of their story, they dreamed not that its fidelity 
would be questioned. They rehearsed astounding 
miracles without any expression of astonishment or 
effort to excite astonishment in others. They re- 
counted the signs and wonders as the known and 
acknowledged prodigies of the new religion, with- 



204 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

out thinking any more of using artifice in the nar- 
ration, than the American geographer would think 
of using artifice in describing the stupendous falls 
of Niagara. They proclaimed the descent and in- 
carnation of the Son of God; and deemed his 
mighty works but the appropriate accompaniments 
of his advent. Sincerity is stamped on every page 
of the Gospel. Its naturalness is no more simulated 
than the blue of the skies. 

Secondly. — Juridical triers look for candor in the 
witnesses as a test of their honesty. But they 
sometimes look in vain. Deponents who would 
recoil from perjury, often fail in impartiality ; un- 
willing to utter a direct falsehood, they nevertheless 
disguise the truth by deceptive coloring ; seduced 
by their partialities and prejudices, they degenerate 
into partisans ; their memories become flexible and 
accommodating, retentive of facts that strengthen 
the cause espoused by them, and oblivious of cir- 
cumstances that would weaken it. Man is by na- 
ture a one-sided being. Partial to his friends and 
unjust to his foes, he is, without the influence of 
grace, a stranger to pure ingenuousness. Even 
classic history rises not above the bias of nation- 
ality. Where is the secular annalist to be found, 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



205 



who has done the same ample justice to hostile 
countries as to his own native land ? Viewed at 
one time in the mirror of French, and at another 
in the mirror of English history, how different do 
the events of modern times appear ! 

Lack of candor always impairs, and often de- 
stroys the testimony of an affirmant in a court of 
justice. But if, irrespective of the contending par- 
ties, and unsparing even of his own errors and 
faults, the witness testifies with unsullied and mag- 
nanimous impartiality, the jury, though they may 
deem him mistaken, never believe him a wilful per- 
verter of the truth. They may distrust his accu- 
racy, but they welcome him to their hearts as an 
honest man. 

Conscious of the deep-rooted biases of our com- 
mon nature, and of the manner in which they are 
regarded by juridical triers, let the explorer of the 
christian evidences contemplate and admire the 
matchless candor that distinguishes the pages of the 
Gospel. Uninspired biographers, if partial to the 
personage they portray, always incline to exaggerate, 
or at least to embellish his virtues. Upon their 
adored Master, who had redeemed them with his 
own blood, the evangelical biographers bestowed 
not a sentence of elaborated eulogy. With the 



206 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



most unaspiring simplicity they reported his say- 
ings, doings, sufferings, and death, and left the un 
varnished narrative to speak for itself. Toward his 
persecutors and murderers, they displayed no vin- 
dictive hostility. Fruitful as was the theme for in- 
censed vituperation, the disciples of the meek and 
merciful Jesus forbore. They remembered that 
their dying Lord had said, " Father, forgive them, 
for they know not what they do." They stated 
with calm serenity his arrest, trial, and crucifixion, 
with the mockings, and scourgings, and spittings, 
but without any intermixture of those indignant 
epithets from which unsanctified humanity could 
not have refrained. 

The writers of the Gospel were themselves 
apostles, and thus interested in the exaltation of the 
apostolic character. Yet they cast no veil over 
the delinquencies of the primitive disciples. The 
high-reaching ambition of the sons of Zebedee ; the 
unfaithfulness of the self-confident Peter ; the de- 
sertion of the whole apostolic band when their aid 
and sympathies seemed most needful ; the pertina- 
cious skepticism of Thomas, are all detailed with- 
out hesitancy or extenuation. Such details were 
prompted by the same ingenuous candor that re- 
corded the aberrations and crimes of the Old Testa- 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



207 



merit saints. Had the evangelical narratives been 
creations of fancy, Judas might not have figured as 
a chief actor in the fabulous drama. That the om- 
niscient should have fostered a traitor in his bosom, 
has ever been a mote in the diseased eye of infidel 
casuistry. 

In the immediate biography of Jesus Christ, pas- 
sages are to be found, which artful impostors might 
have chosen to avoid in a work of fiction, arroga- 
ting for itself the character of truth. His intense 
agony in the garden, sweating " as it were great 
drops of blood falling down to the ground;" his 
fervent, thrice-repeated supplication, " O my Father, 
if it be possible let this cup pass from me and the 
descent of the strengthening envoy from the court 
of heaven, might, to the cavilling mind, seem, per- 
haps, to betoken a faltering of purpose in the incar- 
nate Deity, which an author of romance would not 
willingly impute to its hero. Skilful fabulists 
mar not their works with unexplained mysteries. 
In delineations of the imagination, mysteries indeed 
often appear; but they come like meteors to thrill 
and dazzle for awhile, and then are made to pass 
away under the plastic touch of ingenious solution. 
Adroit authors of fiction are not wont to leave be- 
hind them unsolved mysteries to prey upon the 



208 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

unsatisfied imagination. It was not the fabulous 
pen, but the Spirit of Truth, that has in his inscru- 
table wisdom engraved on the everlasting record of 
the Gospel the unfathomed and unfathomable won- 
ders of Gethsemane. The candor of the evangel- 
ical witnesses is infallible proof of their honesty. 

Thirdly. — When the improbability of testimony 
justly exposes it to peculiarly rigid criticism, the 
juridical triers, still loath to cast upon a fellow- 
creature the imputation of corrupt false swearing, 
turn for relief to the moral character of the witness. 
Truthful is the apothegm of the wisest of men, " A 
good name is rather to be chosen than great riches." 
It is a peerless gem in prosperity, and in adversity 
it is " a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.'' 
That a liar is scarcely to be believed though he 
speaks the truth ; and that a witness of unsullied 
character is not presumed to be perjured though he 
testifies to facts in themselves improbable, are 
suggestions of common sense sanctioned by muni- 
cipal law. A good name derives its tutelar charm 
from its being the outward demonstration of in- 
dwelling virtue. Virtue is the substance of which 
a good name is the faithful shadow. If by the 

strangeness of his evidence, or the cogency of op- 
8 



THE CHKTSTIAN MIEACLES. 



209 



posing proofs, doubt is for the moment cast upon 
the integrity of an honest witness, he may triumph- 
antly dispel that doubt by invoking plenary testi- 
monials to his unspotted reputation. From the 
demonstration of his pure fame the jury justly infer 
the rectitude of his moral principles ; and they well 
conclude that virtue, though she may have often 
mistaken the facts to which she deposed, never wit- 
tingly committed the crime of wilful and deliberate 
perjury. 

The depositions of the evangelical witnesses 
were, as we have seen, equivalent in their sanction 
to oaths in a court of justice. In judging whether, 
in their wonderful narratives, the deponents were 
wilful deceivers, the student of the christian evi- 
dences may derive unspeakable assistance from a 
close view of their moral character. Their virtues 
are seen in their works as in a glass. Their writ- 
ings are the faithful mirror of their minds. The 
Gospel could not have been composed by bad men, 
any more than the turbid and poisonous fountain 
can send forth clear and wholesome streams. The 
impious or the vicious could have been its authors 
no more than the African can change his inde- 
structible hue. Its theism and its ethics, so meek, 
so holy, so sublime, so godlike, stand far as the 



210 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



over-arching heavens above the reachings of com- 
bined profligates. They could have infused into 
the Gospel its moral and spiritual colorings, so 
pure, so uplifting, so various, so harmonious, so 
distinct, and yet so commingled with each other, 
no more than they could have spoken into exist- 
ence the tints of the rainbow. 

But the moral character of the evangelical wit- 
nesses has other demonstrations beside their writ- 
ings. The unanimous voice of christian antiquity, 
from its primitive epoch, proclaimed their match- 
less virtues. General report is the method of 
establishing character immemorially practised in 
courts of judicature. The reputation of persons 
living in early times, is proved by ancient writings. 
How else could we have learned the virtues of 
Socrates, or the infamy of Nero ? The cotem- 
poraries of the apostles w x ould not have combined 
to clothe them in a reputation not deserved ; and 
had such a combination existed, it must have been 
detected and exposed by generations immediately 
succeeding. 

The Jews stood sentinels over the christian 
church. Had there been a stain on the character 
of the primitive disciples, Jewish malignity would 
have proclaimed it to the four winds of heaven. 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



211 



If the thirty pieces of silver had wrung from Isca- 
riot any revelation impugning the integrity of his 
Master, or of his brethren, the high priests and 
scribes and pharisees would have given it a circu- 
lation and perpetuity wide and lasting as the He- 
brew race. Josephus wrote about sixty years 
after the ascension. The christian Scriptures had 
been recently published, and constituted the won- 
der of the world.* Had blemishes been discovered 
in the apostolic character, they must have affected 
the credibility of the new religion ; and the vigi- 
lant Hebrew historian would have grasped and 
spread them with exulting avidity. About the year 
one hundred and eighty, the rabbi Judah, as we 
have seen, compiled and published the Mishna, 
consisting of the Hebrew traditions. Had he been 
able to find in the repositories of Jewish calumny, 
a single report tainting the purity of the apostolic 
name, the learned and rancorous Israelite would 
not have been speechless upon the exciting and 
absorbing theme of the religion of Jesus Christ. 

The Roman Pliny, in his official letter to his im- 
perial master, written at the beginning of the sec- 
ond century, was obliged to admit the morality of 
the primitive believers, and that the torture had 
drawn nothing from them except the assurance 



212 



THE GOSPEL 



ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



that, far from being engaged in any unlawful con- 
spiracy, they were bound by a solemn oath to ab- 
stain from the commission of those crimes which 
disturb the private or public peace of society; 
from theft, robbery, adultery, perjury, and fraud. 
And even the infidel historian of the " Decline and 
Fall of the Roman Empire," has in modern times 
assigned the virtues of the first christians as one of 
the five causes of the wonderful diffusion of the 
Gospel. 

Had the original christian witnesses been of sus- 
picious reputation, tbe new faith would not have 
been likely to outlive its Founder. It was needful 
that its transcendent excellence should be bodied 
forth in action as well as in writing. Its miracles 
were not more conducive to its dissemination than 
the immaculate character of its primitive profes- 
sors. The holy lives and the exulting deaths of 
the early believers, were appeals to the infidel 
world, perhaps more affecting and resistless than 
the curing of the sick by a touch, or the raising of 
the dead by a word. The electric spread of the 
Gospel is a monument to the virtues of its primeval 
witnesses, palpable and lasting as the perpetual hills. 

Fourthly. — Where a plurality of witnesses are 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



213 



invoked to sustain the same facts, the triers in a 
court of justice studiously examine whether they 
agree with themselves and with each other. Fal- 
sity in a protracted narrative, is generally inconsist- 
ent with itself ; and, if several witnesses combine 
in a scheme of deception, they seldom fail of com- 
ing into collision with themselves or their associ- 
ates. Consistency is a characteristic of truth diffi- 
cult for falsehood to imitate ; especially where the 
imitation is to be effected by more than one. Not 
even the gold of the Jewish council could make the 
false witnesses against Jesus Christ agree together.* 
But want of harmony in witnesses called to sup- 
port the same side, is not more fatal to their credi- 
bility than too close a resemblance. A stereotyped 
accordance between several narrators argues con- 
spiracy and drilling. Men differ in their perceptions, 
in their memories, in their mode of presenting 
truths, as much as in their outward forms. In out- 
ward form there may not be two of exact similitude 
in the grand and final assemblage of human kind. 
And why should mental sameness be expected any 
more than corporeal ? Truth never came from 
different lips in a long and unconcerted narrative, 



* Mark xiy. 56. 



214 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



without some slight variation in its shades. Iden- 
tity would imply that it had been " learned and 
conned by rote." 

The investigator of the christian evidences will 
find in the Gospel depositions no studied uniformity, 
and no discrepancy incompatible with their common 
verity. The eight witnesses to the New Testament 
manifestly wrote without concert ; they have no 
artificial sameness of style, narrative, or doctrine. 
Their ostensible disagreements are often startling to 
the superficial observer, and have furnished some 
of the most formidable weapons ever wielded by in- 
fidelity against the faith of the cross. Such im- 
pediments to prompt belief would not have been 
infused into their writings by an adroit band of 
fraudulent conspirators. But the occasional sem- 
blance of inconsistency in the sacred witnesses has 
been explained by the labors of pious criticism ; and 
the harmony of the Gospel is now as clearly dem- 
onstrated as the harmony of the spheres. 



CHAPTER XI. 



THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 

"Writers of Gospel had no motive to deceive — Not moved by re- 
venge — Or prejudice — Or hope of temporal emolument — Ov 
desire to gain fame by tales of wonder — Incurred by their testi- 
mony certain obloquy, privations and sufferings, and probable 
torture and martyrdom — Conditions of discipleship foretold from 
beginning — Martyrdom, though not always proving orthodoxy, 
proves sincerity of victims. 

It is in the detection of motive that the science 
of juridical evidence displays its utmost prowess. 
When in a court of justice, testimony is loaded with 
intrinsic improbability, and when the facts utterly 
exclude the supposition of unintentional mistake or 
mental hallucination, so that the triers have no 
alternative but to believe the witness true, or else 
to believe him perjured ; then it is that the juridical 
science of evidence comes to their aid and enables 
them to solve the problem of innocence or guilt with 
almost infallible certainty by probing " the thoughts 
and intents of the heart." Has any sinister motive 
led the witness astray ? Was he stimulated by re- 
venge or prejudice? Was he beguiled by the 



216 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



hope of gain, direct or consequential? Was he 
urged onward by ambitious promptings ? Was his 
astonishing testimony induced by the thirst of dis- 
tinction ? 

These are inquiries to which the minds of the 
startled triers will anxiously address themselves. 
And if the circumstances of the case, evolved, per- 
haps, by the pressing machinery of questioning and 
cross-questioning, return to each of these inquiries 
a negative response, full and clear as the solar rays ; 
and if furthermore it should appear beyond perad- 
venture that the witness by testifying incurred in- 
evitable obloquy, privations and suffering, and im- 
minent jeopardy of imprisonment, torture and 
martyrdom, the triers could not, becanse he testified 
to facts new and strange to their limited experience, 
pronounce him guilty of perjury, without violating 
their own official oaths which bind them to decide 
according to the evidence. The difficulty of dis- 
believing the testimony would be immeasurably en- 
hanced if it should be confirmed by seven other 
independent witnesses testifying, like the first, with- 
out liability to impeachment of motive, and like him, 
incurring by the very act of their asseveration sure 
obloquy, privations, and suffering, and probable im- 
prisonment, torture, and martyrdom. 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



217 



Let the tests of motive, so efficient in the jurid- 
ical science of evidence, be invoked into the 
christian service, and applied in all their power to 
the eight evangelical witnesses. 

First. — The writers of the Gospel were not in- 
stigated by revenge or prejudice ; nor were they 
moved by the hope of temporal gain. At the time 
of their conversion, the peasants of Judea were 
strangers to the heathen world. Neither against 
polytheism, nor the faith of their mother-land, had 
they any vengeance to wreak. To the Mosaic in- 
stitutions and the traditions of the elders, they were 
attached by the ardent prepossessions of childhood. 
Paul was "a pharisee, the son of a pharisee," 
brought up at the feet of Gamaliel. 

Nor were the evangelical witnesses beguiled by 
the expectation of temporal emolument. They had 
plighted their allegiance to a King whose natal 
palace was a stable, whose throne was a cross, 
whose crown was of thorns, who declared of him- 
self " My kingdom is not of this world," and whose 
only resting-place on earth was a stranger's grave. 
What temporal gain could they expect from follow- 
ing an indigent Preacher of righteousness, who, in 

this vast globe, had not " where to lay his head ?" 
10 



218 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

The apostles themselves lived and died in abject 
poverty, meekly and contentedly working with 
their own hands. 

Secondly. — The writers of the Gospel were not 
stimulated by a thirst of worldly renown. It is true 
that the love of fame is an active passion of the 
human soul. For the love of fame the poet has 
sung, the philosopher toiled, the warrior dared the 
utmost perils of " the imminent deadly breach." 
But the evangelical witnesses knew from the be- 
ginning that their earthly portion would be obloquy, 
enduring as life. How could the disciples hope to 
escape those poisoned calumnies which had encom- 
passed their Lord from the waves of Jordan to the 
tomb of Joseph ? 

The apostles have, indeed, succeeded to an in- 
heritance of posthumous renown immeasurably sur- 
passing that of any martial conqueror. But con- 
scious impostors could not have anticipated such a 
consummation. The disciples had beheld their 
Master betrayed and arrested ; they had deserted 
him and fled ; hovering round the summit of Cal- 
vary they had seen him crucified between two 
thieves. Nothing but his resurrection could have 
resuscitated the hopes of his discomfited followers. 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



219 



Had not Jesus Christ risen from the dead, the 
christian system must have been buried forever in 
the sepulchre of the Arithmathean. His rising on 
the third day was the seal of heaven to the truth of 
his religion. Uplifted by the certainty of their 
Lord's resurrection, the sure precursor of their own, 
the apostolic witnesses surveyed the vista of time 
through the telescope of faith. They beheld the 
spread of the everlasting Gospel, and, perhaps, 
caught glimpses of their own terrestrial celebrity 
ages after their decease. By the same telescope of 
faith they gazed upward through the opening 
heavens, and saw their names "written in the 
Lamb's book of life." And with such seraphic 
visions before them, how insignificant must have 
seemed the proudest entries on the scroll of mortal 
fame ! It was not for the bubble of posthumous 
applause, but for the unfading joys prepared for 
them at God's right hand, that, like their Master, 
the apostles "endured the cross, despising the 
shame."* 

Thirdly. — The writers of the Gospel were not 
prompted to their perilous enterprise by a morbid 



* Hebrews xii. 2. 



220 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

passion to astonish the world with tales of won- 
der. The marvels of redeeming love surpass the 
darings of the boldest romance. Fiction would 
not have attempted to body forth the incarnation 
of the Creator of the universe ; his birth in a man- 
ger ; his sojourn on earth for more than the third 
of what we term a century ; his abject penury ; his 
sweat of labor in the workshop of the carpenter ; 
his sweat of blood in the garden of Gethsemane ; 
his washing of the feet of his betraying and desert- 
ing disciples ; the scoffings, scourgings, and spit- 
tings that he so meekly endured; his crucifixion 
between malefactors ; his prayer for his murderers. 
We admit that the passion of recounting and lis- 
tening to marvellous relations, is a deep-seated 
principle of our common nature. It is developed 
even in the nurseries of childhood. But no writer 
of romance, however strong may be its intrinsic 
fascinations, would willingly pursue his vocation, 
under the certainty that it must subject him to pri- 
vation, want, and infamy, from which he could hope 
for no respite, save in the sanctuary of the grave. 

Fourthly. — The contumely, persecutions, and suf- 
ferings which the Gospel entailed on its early pro- 
mulgators, are unexampled in the annals of human 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



221 



woe. Tacitus, as we have seen, declared of the 
primitive christians, that they were " branded with 
deserved infamy," " for their hatred of human 
kind." Paul affirmed of himself and his apostolic 
brethren, " We are made as the filth of the earth, 
and are the offscouring of all things unto this day."* 
The persecutions and sufferings of the christians 
of the first three centuries, are written on the pages 
of ecclesiastical and secular history, in characters 
of blood. Their persecutions and sufferings were 
predicted by the Gospel itself. Its Founder de- 
coyed none into his service by flattering assurances 
ne\ r er to be realized ; to his followers he explicitly 
foretold the terms of apostleship. " But beware of 
men : for they will deliver you up to councils ; and 
they will scourge you in their synagogues ; and ye 
shall be brought before governors and kings for my 
sake, for a testimony against them and the gen- 
tiles." " And ye shall be hated of all men for my 
name's sake." " It is enough for the disciple that 
he be as his master, and the servant as his lord ; 
if they have called the master of the house Beelze- 
bub, how much more shall they call them of his 
household ?" And even in his last most pathetic 



* 1 Corinth, iv. 13. 



222 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



interview with his chosen disciples, he tells them, 
broken-hearted as they were, " If the world hate 
you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. 
If you were of the world, the world would love his 
own ; but because ye are not of the world, but I 
have chosen you out of the world, therefore the 
world hateth you. Remember the word that I said 
unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord ; 
if they have persecuted me, they will also perse- 
cute you." " They shall put you out of the syna- 
gogues, yea, the time cometh, that whosoever kill- 
eth you will think that he doeth God service." 

Such were the avowed conditions of discipleship 
in the school of Jesus. Had the primitive believ- 
ers recoiled from suffering when called on to suffer, 
they would have belied their faith. Had they not 
been called on to suffer, their faith would have be- 
lied itself. The prediction of their sufferings 
formed a vital constituent of the Gospel ; the fail- 
ure of the prediction would have shown the Gospel 
to be a fiction. Prophecies unfulfilled prove the 
prophet an impostor. Had early Christianity passed 
scathless through several successive generations, 
its continued tranquillity would have demonstrated 
it to be " of the earth, earthy." Its enemies would 
have pointed contemptuously at its unaccomplished 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



223 



predictions ; and the " slow unmoving finger" of 
scorn would have been of more exterminating 
power than the stake, the cross, or the lions. 

Time speedily evinced the truth of the evangel- 
ical denunciations ; it brought down upon the early 
faithful the full weight of the foretold sufferings. 
There was no failure in the prophecies of the Gos- 
pel. Among the christian sufferers the sacred 
writers held precedence. In their own persons 
they helped to fulfil the predictions which their 
own hands had recorded. Their agency in the 
promulgation of the Gospel marked them as prom- 
inent objects of the world's vengeance. This they 
must have expected from the beginning. And is it 
indeed to be believed, that the evangelical wit- 
nesses, without motive of revenge, or gain, or am- 
bition, headed an impious conspiracy for the pre- 
meditated and sole purpose of earning for them- 
selves obloquy, persecutions, and sufferings lasting 
as life and more bitter than death ? Yet such is 
the faith that infidelity would inculcate as a substi- 
tute for the faith of the Gospel ! 

There was an element in the sufferings of the 
primitive faithful, not perhaps so palpable to the 
eye of history, as their imprisonments and physical 
tortures, and yet no less "piercing, even to the di- 



224 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

viding asunder of soul and spirit." Christianity- 
reared a wall of partition between them and those 
unbelieving companions to whom their hearts had 
most fondly cleaved. This rupture of social liga- 
ments was predicted by the Founder of the Gospel : 
" Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on the 
earth ? I tell you nay, but rather division." " The 
father shall be divided against the son, and the son 
against the father ; the mother against the daughter, 
and the daughter against the mother."* 

To the primitive christians it was no slight be- 
reavement to have thus severed the warm ties 
which had bound them to the dear friends of their 
youth, the beloved associates of all their toils, their 
pleasures and their griefs : to behold familiar faces, 
heretofore lighted up with smiles, now covered with 
the wintry frown ; to see hands once extended for 
the friendly grasp, now indignantly repulsive to 
their kindest advances. Paul doubtless felt the 
alienation of the companions of his early studies, 
and the estrangement of the venerable Gamaliel, 
more keenly than he did the revilings and lashes 
of stranger foes. And the iron grasp of early infi- 
delity rent asunder even the strong chords of na- 



* Luke xii. 51, 58. 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



225 



ture. The unbelieving parent anathematized the 
believing child ; the unbelieving child poured con- 
tempt on the believing parent. 

Voluntary expatriation for conscience' sake is, 
perhaps, the most arduous achievement to which 
humanity ever attained. The Lacedaemonian leg- 
islator who bound his countrymen by oath to main- 
tain his laws inviolate until he should himself re- 
turn, and then went into perpetual exile to pine 
away and die in a foreign clime, thus giving per- 
manence to his laws by his own self-banishment, 
was doubtless a more suffering patriot than the 
Spartan hero who at Thermopylae sought and ob- 
tained an immortality of fame. Self-banishment 
may be effected without change of domicil. It is 
less its hills and its vales, than its social charms 
that bind us to our native land. Severed from 
these ties of affection we become exiles, though we 
may remain at home. The most terrible isolation is 
that which is encompassed by alienated friends. 
To this exile of the heart the primitive disciples be- 
came the victims. They gave up for Christ the 
loved companions of their childhood, their brethren 
and sisters, and fathers and mothers ; " they for- 
sook all and followed him." And if they were con- 
scious hypocrites, the faith they professed afforded 
10* 



226 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

them no substitute for the sacrifices they had made. 
They became aliens to God as well as to their 
friends, and kindred, and country. 

Fifthly. — Further proof that the evangelical 
witnesses were sincere and honest in delivering 
their testimony is derived from the additional fact 
that it exposed them, not only to contumely, perse- 
cutions, and sufferings, but to imminent jeopardy of 
martyrdom. This impending jeopardy they under- 
stood from the first ; for it was recorded in their 
own writings. Multitudes of the apostles drank of 
the cup of which their Master had drank, and were 
baptized of the baptism of which he had been bap- 
tized. To the honors of martyrdom, two at 
least of the evangelical writers attained ; and their 
deaths of torture are supposed to have occurred in 
the memorable gardens of Nero. The imperial 
Julian sneeringly points to the sepulchres of Peter 
and of Paul in his own capital. 

Martyrdom, though it does not always prove the 
orthodoxy of the martyr, is full demonstration of 
his honesty. It is to be borne in mind that pagan- 
ism ever stood ready to relent, if the doomed victim 
would but sacrifice to her gods ; a single act of ob- 
lation would always have rescued him, even at the 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



227 



last extremity. Polytheism welcomed back christian 
recreants, as her own prodigal sons returned to the 
maternal bosom. She received them not only with 
affection, but with favor. No man ever died to 
vindicate a known lie, when he might have saved 
his life, and his honor too in the estimation of the 
world, by simple recantation. Voluntary martyr- 
doms have sometimes been incurred in the cause 
of error; never in the cause of hypocrisy. The 
Gospel writers, then, were not hypocrites ; the dun- 
geon, the stake, and the cross attest their sincerity. 

It is true that the martyrs of the primitive church 
professed to be sustained in the midst of their 
agonies by ecstatic communion with their risen Sa- 
viour, and transporting views of the joys which 
awaited them in the paradise so near at hand. But 
this profession was sheer hypocrisy, if they believed 
that the Gospel was only a delusion. An imposture, 
known and felt to be such, has no charms to soothe 
and ravish the departing spirit. Had the tortured 
and condemned promulgators of the persecuted 
faith been professors in name only, and unbelievers 
in heart, they would not, even in imagination, have 
been sustained and gladdened at the dying hour by 
those glories of the opening heavens which trans- 
ported the stoned Stephen. Nor could they, if 



228 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

conscious hypocrites, have hoped to enjoy even 
the fabled elysium of polytheism. For they had 
irreverently affronted all the false deities of Olym- 
pus, as well as that sublime and unapproachable 
Essence whom the heathen sometimes termed the 
Soul of the universe, and ignorantly worshipped as 
" The unknown God they had forged his awful 
name to a record of falsehoods ; they had set the 
world on fire, and impiously pretended that the 
flame came down from heaven. Thenceforth " a 
certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery in- 
dignation" must have preyed on the souls of the 
blaspheming reprobates, and darkened even their 
dungeon's gloom.* 



* Hebrews x. 21. 



CHAPTER XII. 



THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 

Auxiliary and supplemental witnesses to christian miracles — Gos- 
pel made miracles test of its divinity — Age of miracles continued 
near seventy years — During miraculous age all christians had 
sure means of ascertaining genuineness of miracles — Bore testi- 
mony to theh genuineness by perilous adhesion to persecuted 
faith — Miracles the evidences of title to the promised inheritance 
above — Seekers after truth of Gospel would scrutinize closely 
these evidences before giving up all to purchase inheritance — 
"Witnesses to miracles thus multiplied to many thousands — Each 
witness testified by his act as strongly as he could by his pen or 
oath — Argument of Leslie drawn from institutions of Baptism^ 
Lord's Supper and christian Sabbath — New Testament and old 
parts of same system — If Gospel forged so were Jewish Scrip- 
tures. 

We have hitherto limited our remarks upon the 
proofs of the christian miracles to the depositions 
of the eight writers of the Gospel. But it must 
never be forgotten, that the truth of those deposi- 
tions is confirmed by a mighty host of collateral 
and supplemental witnesses. 

Jesus Christ declared, " For the works which the 
Father hath given me to finish, the same works 
that I do bear witness of me that the Father hath 



230 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

sent me."* " If I do not the works of my Father, 
believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not 
me, believe the works. "f He appealed to his 
works as proofs that he was the Son of God. He 
exacted belief or sanctioned unbelief, as his works 
were or were not miraculous. The Redeemer 
dealt with those he came to redeem as with ra- 
tional beings ; he required not blind reliance on 
the truth even of his own benign declarations ; he 
rested the authentication of his messiahship on his 
signs and wonders. And the Gospel announced 
that to his apostles he bequeathed miraculous pow- 
ers as the palpable seals of their heavenly mission. 
Paul affirmed, in his second epistle to the church 
planted by him at Corinth, " Truly the signs of an 
apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in 
signs and wonders and mighty deeds. "J And in 
his epistle to the Hebrews, when speaking of the 
apostolic missionaries to the dispersed nations, he 
declared, " God also bearing them witness both 
with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, 
and gifts of the Holy Ghost. "§ Thus the Gospel 
made the genuineness of its mighty works the test 



* John v. 36. 

% 2 Corinthians xii. 12. 



f John x. 37, 38. 
§ Hebrews ii. 4. 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



231 



of its credibility. Among those works it classed 
the supernatural gift of tongues claimed to be ex- 
ercised by its primitive preachers. 

In the age of Jesus of Nazareth, and in the apos- 
tolic era succeeding his decease, the profession of 
his religion was attended with tremendous sacri- 
fices. All sublunary hopes were to be abandoned 
for the hope of an unseen inheritance beyond the 
grave. The palpable proofs of the reality of that 
inheritance were the signs and wonders claimed to 
be wrought by the Founder of Christianity and his 
apostles. Those signs and wonders were the offi- 
cial credentials of the Gospel. On those creden- 
tials would be riveted the inquisition of the world. 
More especially intense must have been the scru- 
tiny of those who were about to exchange the re- 
ligion of their ancestors for the new faith which 
promised nothing below the skies save obloquy, 
privation, and suffering. 

Even an earthly estate, though comparatively 
of ephemeral worth, is not purchased without a 
previous and thorough examination of the evi- 
dences of its title. No purchaser would rely on 
the mere representations of an unknown vendor. 
The heavenly estate proffered by the Gospel, as far 
surpassed in value any terrestrial acquisition as the 



232 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

duration of eternity surpasses the duration of time. 
But the terms on which the celestial inheritance 
was offered to the primitive inquirer,- were strict, 
uncompromising, and startling. He must forsake 
the world, and take up his cross daily, and follow 
the crucified Redeemer. Costly and perilous was 
the proposed investment; on the evidences of its 
reality, it is most unlikely that the searcher after 
truth would permit himself to be deceived. The 
heavenly inheritance was presented to him as the 
" one pearl of great price but before he " went 
and sold all that he had and bought it,"* the com- 
mon principles of human nature assure us that he 
would have sought, as for his life, to learn whether 
the seemingly precious jewel might not be a coun- 
terfeit. The christian signs and wonders were the 
sure touchstone for trying it. If they were found 
to be illusory, the inference would be inevitable 
that what purported to be " the pearl of great price," 
was but a bauble of earthly mould ; if the miracles 
were ascertained to be real, they demonstrated it 
to be genuine and enduring as the eternal throne. 

The personal followers of our Lord were eye and 
ear witnesses of his miracles. Their united senses 



* Matthew xiii. 46. 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



233 



could not have deceived them. By the very act 
of adherence to the new faith, they testified to their 
cotemporaries and to posterity, that his signs and 
wonders were supernatural. They became fellow- 
witnesses with the eight writers of the Gospel. 
The thousands of dwellers at Jerusalem who were 
made converts to Christianity within a few days 
after its Founder had been crucified as a malefac- 
tor, must have known of their own knowledge, 
whether his crucifixion was attended with the 
quaking of the earth, the rending of the rocks, and 
the darkening of the sun ; and by plighting their 
allegiance to the persecuted religion, they bore un- 
equivocal testimony to the fact of those stupendous 
prodigies. Living upon the spot cotemporaneously 
with his alleged resurrection, they were surrounded 
with demonstrations of the truthful or fabulous 
character of that event so vital to the christian 
faith. That they cast in their lot with the people 
of God, is irrefragable evidence that they knew the 
resurrection to be a glorious reality. 

To the stern test of miracles, the Gospel submit- 
ted itself for almost seventy years after the death 
of its Author. The apostolic era, commencing at 
the time of the ascension, terminated not until the 
decease of the last of the chosen twelve ; and Saint 



234 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



John survived until nearly the end of the first cen- 
tury. That whole era claimed to be a continuation 
of the age of miracles. It was not the original mir- 
acles performed in Judea during the lifetime of the 
Saviour, to which alone the Gospel referred when 
stating that signs and wonders were its authenti- 
cating credentials. The gift of tongues was not 
imparted until the day of pentecost. Miracles 
were the avowed credentials of Christianity in all 
its pristine progress. The nations were authorized 
by the Gospel itself to require the display of those 
credentials as a preliminary to their belief. They 
were not bound to heed the heralds of the cross, 
unless they exhibited " the signs of an apostle." 
A total dearth of miracles during the era claimed 
as miraculous, would have been fatal to the cause 
of Christianity. It would have betrayed a discrep- 
ancy between what it had professed and what it 
had performed. In its falsified pretensions, unbe- 
lief would have found a triumphant apology. Had 
the world, by the most profound and searching 
scrutiny, been able to detect any imposture or fail- 
ure in the christian signs and wonders, the Gospel, 
making its miracles the test of its truth, would have 
perished by its own suicidal hands. The astound- 
ing progress of Christianity during the first century, 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



235 



is, therefore, conclusive demonstration that it faith- 
fully performed what it had professed ; and that its 
victories were achieved " with signs and wonders, 
and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy 
Ghost," not simulated but genuine. 

There was no possibility of mistake in the reality 
of the christian prodigies. The age termed mirac- 
ulous, including the time of the public ministrations 
of our Lord, continued about threescore years and 
ten ; it embraced two entire generations of the 
human family. During this long period the prose- 
lytes of the new religion gathered in the vast conti- 
nents of Asia, Europe, and Africa, were spectators 
and auditors of its signs and wonders. Whether 
the sick were cured, the dead raised, the elements 
controlled by a word; and whether the various na- 
tions and tribes were addressed in their own multi- 
farious and strange languages, by Jewish fishermen, 
publicans, and tentmakers, scarcely understanding 
the rudiments of their mother tongue, were simple 
points which the senses of all observers could ascer- 
tain with unerring precision. They had not to 
explore distant countries ; the wonderful demon- 
strations were brought home to their own doors. 
Without the fullest confidence in the reality of the 
celestial inheritance promised to the faithful, and 



236 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

attested by the signs and wonders of the Gospel, 
the spiritual children of the age held miraculous, so 
vast in their numbers, so diverse in their nativities, 
their speech, their intellectual and social conditions, 
would not voluntarily have exchanged the fascina- 
tions of this alluring world for the lives of privation 
and suffering, and the deaths of torture exacted by 
the faith of the carpenter's Son. Individuals may 
be deluded for a time by fictitious miracles; but 
where the professed miracles are open, public, and 
diffused, such delusion could not overspread conti- 
nents and reign for generations, especially at a 
period distinguished for mental culture. 

The evangelical deponents who composed the 
Gospel were but eight in number. But they were 
reinforced by an auxiliary army of collateral and 
supplemental witnesses, extending from the conver- 
sion of water into wine, by Jesus Christ, at Cana of 
Galilee, to the close of the apostolic era, and 
amounting to hundreds of thousands. Every 
year of the memorable epoch swelled the mighty 
array.- Before its close Christianity had spread 
itself into almost every country of the then known 
world. Each step of its triumphant march had 
multiplied the proofs of its heavenly origin by mul- 
tiplying the witnesses to the genuineness of its 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



237 



authenticating prodigies. Few written testimonials 
from these collateral and supplemental witnesses 
have reached the present day. But stronger than 
writings, in convincing power, were their perilous 
professions of the persecuted faith. They testified 
by their acts more irresistibly than they could 
have testified by their oaths. Actions speak louder 
than mere words flowing either from the tongue 
or from the pen. 

It cannot be imagined that for the greater part 
of a century, and in almost every country of the 
known world, the converts to the Gospel were de- 
ceived by simulated miracles. The nature of the 
miracles, and their wide diffusion and long-con- 
tinued duration, precluded the possibility of decep- 
tion. Nor can it be imagined even by the infidel, 
that the mass of primitive believers, whose unwrit- 
ten and unassuming testimonials to the genuineness 
of the christian signs and wonders have descended 
along the track of time like a deep, silent, over- 
powering stream, were all combined in a fraudu- 
lent conspiracy to deceive their fellow-beings. 
What could they have gained by becoming parties 
to such a conspiracy? Infidelity has urged that 
the writers of the Gospel were pressed onward by 
the thirst of distinction. If this charge was truth- 



238 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



ful instead of being, as it is, grossly libellous, how 
could it apply to the common mass of the early 
converts ? There is a distinction between the 
teachers of a theory and the taught. Should the 
authors of an imposture be impelled by the expec- 
tation of acquiring for themselves a false renown, 
from its ingenuity, novelty, and success, how could 
the deluded dupes of the imposture aspire to share 
in the triumph ? It was not, then, the desire of 
fame, but the almightiness of truth, which induced 
the unambitious multitudes of early proselytes to 
abandon the religion of their fathers, for the de- 
tested and despised faith of the cross. 

Beside the eight writers of the Gospel, and the 
numerous converts to Christianity in the first cen- 
tury, there was yet another class of witnesses to its 
signs and wonders, not to be passed over in silence. 
To the fact of those signs and wonders, the unbe- 
lieving Jews and gentiles of the age termed miracu- 
lous bore reluctant but resistless testimony. 

The primitive unbelievers well knew, that from 
the beginning, the Gospel had announced its mir- 
acles as its official credentials ; that it made them 
the test of its truth ; that in its march from country 
to country it had everywhere displayed them in the 
face of its enemies, whose most rigid scrutiny it had 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



239 



openly challenged. That challenge its enemies 
could not elude. They gazed on the prodigies, and 
wondered, and trembled, and blasphemed. They 
well knew that if they could pierce Christianity in 
the vital constituent of its miracles, the wound, 
however slight, must be necessarily fatal. Yet with 
the most ample means of examination, they detected 
no deception in the christian wonders. That their 
closest research, animated by untiring zeal, could 
detect no imposture, was conclusive evidence to all 
posterity that no imposture existed. The Jews as- 
cribed the stupendous works to the agency of Beel- 
zebub ; the gentiles to magic learned in Egypt. By 
thus attributing them to demoniac or magical in- 
fluences, both Jews and gentiles admitted their 
existence and supernatural character. The total 
denial that prodigies were wrought by Jesus Christ 
and by his apostles, is an achievement of modern 
infidelity. Both Celsus and Julian, as we have 
seen in a former chapter, virtually admitted the 
reality of the christian signs and wonders. 

Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and the Christian 
Sabbath are public monuments authenticating the 
miracles of the Gospel. 

These memorials of dying love could not have 
been the inventions of an age posterior to that as- 



240 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

signed for their origin. The Gospel affirms that 
they were coeval with the death of its Founder ; 
and that the whole christian church had from the 
beginning recognized them as divine institutions. 
Had they been first introduced in a subsequent 
century, their assumption of an anterior date 
would have been an imposture palpable to univer- 
sal perception. None could have been ignorant 
that they had never been heard of before; and 
their fraudulent claim to antiquity would have 
concentrated upon the christian name the just in- 
dignation of an outraged world, and blighted all 
hopes of enlarging here below the empire of the 
Prince of peace. 

Nor could Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and the 
Christian Sabbath have been originally established 
in the age to which the Gospel ascribes them, un- 
less they had for their broad and deep foundation 
the verity of the facts of which they preserve the 
remembrance. They commemorate not the death 
of Jesus Christ alone, but also all the miracles by 
which he authenticated his messiahship, whether 
performed by himself or by his apostles. They 
commemorate the whole stupendous panorama of 
salvation. Those monumental institutions would 
not have been reared and perpetuated by the unan- 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



241 



imous concurrence of the early church, had a 
shadow of suspicion rested upon the miraculous 
demonstrations of the Gospel's truth. 

The observance of the institutions was attended 
with the most imminent perils to the primitive pro- 
fessors. The heathen Pliny admits in his letter to 
his imperial sovereign, herein before set forth, that 
when the early believers met " on a stated day/' 
" to repeat among themselves a hymn to Christ as 
to a God," they were obliged " to meet before day- 
light." It was only under the shade of night that 
they could venture to chaunt the praises of their 
Redeemer. According to the same authority, their 
sacramental feasts exposed the communicants to 
the most pressing danger of torture and death. 
Even the pious deaconesses, referred to by Pliny, 
were not protected by their sex or age from the 
common and appalling jeopardy. The christian 
ordinances could not have survived for a single 
year the wrath of persecution, unless the divinity 
of the Gospel had been confirmed " with signs 
and wonders, and with divers miracles and gifts 
of the Holy Ghost." Nothing but the outstretched 
arm of God saved them from the fury of man. 

The argument for the truth of Christianity, drawn 

from its commemorative institutions, seems to have 
11 



242 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



been first presented by Leslie ; and his " Short and 
Easy Method with the Deists," has long been justly 
celebrated for its brevity, acuteness, and force. 

If the Gospel is a fabrication, it is impossible that 
the Jewish Scriptures should have been written by 
the finger of God. The two codes are linked to- 
gether by indissoluble ties. The Old Testament is 
replete with prophetic delineations of the Messiah 
of the New; the New Testament abounds in ap- 
proving references to the Old. If the eight writers 
of the Gospel joined together in an unholy league, 
the grand scriptural conspiracy for the deception 
of the world, must have been as ancient as the 
pentateuch. Between the date of the books of 
Moses and the close of the apostolic era, sixteen 
hundred years elapsed. A fraudulent conspiracy, 
without prospect of wealth or fame, could not have 
found aliment to live on for so many centuries. 
The secret of the imposture must have been con- 
fided to all the principal confederates. That fatal 
secret could not have escaped detection by domes- 
tic treason or foreign scrutiny during such a suc- 
cession of ages. If not otherwise brought to light, 
the confessions of the death-bed would at some 
time have betrayed it. These thoughts are strongly 
and beautifully expressed by Dryden in the follow- 



THE CHRISTIAN MIRACLES. 



243 



ing lines, blending with the force of truth the 
charms of poetry : — 

" "Whence, but from heaven, could men unskilled in arts, 
In different ages born, in different parts, 
Weave such agreeing truths ? Or how, or why 
Should all conspire to cheat us with a lie ? 
Unasked their pains, ungrateful their advice, 
Starving their gains, and martyrdom their price." 



CHAPTER XIII. 



hume's objection to miracles. 

Miniature of Hume's theory — Vagueness in his use of term ex- 
perience — General uniformity of nature's laws proved by human 
testimony — So may any exceptions to that uniformity — On 
Hume's theory miracles not to be believed on evidence of our 
own senses — Evidence of senses not more infallible than well 
sustained testimony of our fellow-men* — Man lives in world of 
miracles and is himself a miracle — No objection to miracles that 
they are designed to authenticate a system of religion — Such 
miracles imbued with intrinsic probability — No impostor ever 
founded new system of faith on miracles. 

Hume may, perhaps, be deemed the prince of 
infidels. His deadly aim at the heart of our holy 
religion, caused at first some alarm in the christian 
world. But the bolt has fallen powerless to the 
earth. By a sort of second sight the Scotch philos- 
opher indulged the assurance that his celebrated 
essay on miracles would live and reign until the 
end of time. He says ; " I flatter myself that I 
have discovered an argument which, if just, will 
with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check 
to all kinds of superstitious delusion ; and conse- 
quently will be useful as long as the world endures. 
For so long, I presume, will accounts of miracles 



hume's objection to miracles. 245 



and prodigies be found in all history, sacred and 
profane." The following is a miniature of the 
theory on which he so boldly raised his hopes of 
immortality. He contends that our belief of facts 
is founded on experience alone ; that experience 
teaches that nature's laws are inflexibly uniform, 
and that human testimony is lamentably deceptive; 
that a miracle would be a violation of those fixed 
laws ; that when a miraculous event is affirmed on 
the credit of human testimony, the affirmation is 
opposed by our sure experience of the established 
course of nature ; and that in such contest, the 
evidence against the alleged miracle, arising from' 
the established course of nature controls and over- 
rules the human testimony in its favor, as in a con- 
flict between the fallible and the infallible, the latter 
must always predominate. From these premises 
is drawn his confident conclusion, that no accumu- 
lation of human testimony whatsoever can establish 
a miracle, upon which any system of religious faith 
is sought to be reared. 

The skeptical philosopher uses the term experi- 
ence in a sense not always free from equivocation. 
He seems to imply by the term, sometimes our own 
individual experience, and sometimes the experi- 
ence of mankind in general. 



246 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

If we are to believe only what we have learned 
from our own experience, our faith in facts would 
be confined to limits exceedingly diminutive. Com- 
paratively few know from personal observation, 
that, on some shores, the tide rises to the height of 
sixty or seventy feet ; or that the wind, so famed 
for its variableness, blows in certain latitudes from a 
single point throughout the year ; or that meteoric 
stones of ponderous weight have often fallen from 
the skies. Yet all justly believe in the existence of 
these phenomena on the credit of universal report. 
If personal experience is the only true basis of belief 
in facts, the Saracen monarch was right in reject- 
ing as fabulous the tale of the northern crusaders, 
that in their climate, rivers and lakes were some- 
times congealed by frost so as to bear the weight 
of marching armies ; and he was wrong in after- 
wards yielding credence to the seeming prodigy on 
the faith of human testimony. 

Nor are miracles to be discredited because they 
have not been familiar to the experience of man- 
kind in general. The definition of a miracle im- 
plies a departure from laws ordinarily uniform. 
The arrest of the sun on Gibeon would not have 
been a preternatural wonder had the luminary of 
day been accustomed to pause in its career. Mir- 



hume's objection to miracles. 247 



acles are exceptions to the general order of the 
physical universe ; and it is to be expected that the 
witnesses to the exceptions should be the few and 
not the many. It is a vital element in the infidel 
theory, that miracles are opposed not only to the 
general, but also to the universal experience of the 
human race. A single acknowledged deviation 
from the laws of nature, in any country or age, 
would be fatal to the theory. " There must, there- 
fore," says Hume, "be a uniform experience 
against every miraculous event; otherwise the 
event would not merit that appellation." 

In assuming it as a truism, that miracles are op- 
posed to the immemorial and universal experience 
of human kind, the philosopher takes for granted 
the very point in issue between him and christians. 
We utterly deny the truth of the position, so con- 
fidently assumed. The philosopher's palpable of- 
fence against the first principles of sound logic is 
styled in Latin petitio principii, and, in plain 
English, begging the question. The burden of 
proving that the laws of nature have been invio- 
lable from the beginning, devolved upon him. He 
attempts summarily to dispose of this onus probandi 
by the bare and bold assertion, that their inviola- 
bility has been established by " a firm and unalter- 



248 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



able experience." No other proof does he deign to 
suggest. But how did he ascertain this experience ? 
He could not have acquired it by intuition, or by 
his own personal observation. He possessed not 
the attribute of ubiquity ; nor did his memory reach 
back to the birth of time. He must have gathered 
the materials of his knowledge from history and 
general report. It was human testimony that gave 
aliment to what he presumes to call " a firm and 
unalterable experience." Excepting the diminutive 
speck of his personal observation, he had no source 
save human testimony, from whence he could de- 
rive information respecting the experience of the 
human race. 

Human testimony is, then, the basis of the reck- 
less proposition, that miracles are opposed to im- 
memorial and universal experience. Thus human 
testimony is made, chameleon-like, to change its 
complexion, according to the point it is called on 
to support. When sustaining his theory of the im- 
mutability of nature's laws, the insidious skeptic 
affects to regard it as of incontrovertible authority. 
But he vituperates it as utterly unworthy of credit, 
when invoked to demonstrate that God, for gra- 
cious purposes, has sometimes suspended or varied 
the physical laws of his empire. Hume expressly 



hume's objection to miracles. 249 

declares, "And therefore we may establish it as a 
maxim, that no human testimony can have such 
force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just 
foundation for any system of religion." 

Such are the inconsistencies of infidelity! It 
was never before intimated that evidence held suf- 
ficient to prove a general rule, should not be deemed 
equally sufficient to prove any exceptions to that 
rule. If history and general report are competent 
to establish the uniformity of the laws of nature, 
why should they lack competency to establish mi- 
raculous suspensions of that uniformity ? Yet the 
candor of infidelity would array human testimony 
in the habiliments of an angel of light when testi- 
fying in the cause of unbelief, and brand her as a 
deceiving spirit when testifying in the cause of 
salvation ! 

Miracles may be proved like other facts. All 
the events on earth may be proved by the denizens 
of earth. Miracles are, indeed, encumbered with 
intrinsic improbabilities, and require an extraor- 
dinary amount of evidence to confirm them. But 
that their intrinsic improbabilities are incapable of 
being overcome by any conceivable accumulation 
of human testimony, is a proposition opposed alike 

to the principles of jurisprudence, philosophy, and 
11* 



250 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

common sense. The proposition is neutralized 
even by Hume himself in another part of his self- 
conflicting essay. He admits that any miracle 
may be proved by testimony, if " the testimony be 
of such a kind that its falsehood would be more mi- 
raculous than the fact it endeavors to establish." 
In the four preceding chapters, we have sought to 
show, and we trust not without success, that the 
falsehood of the collective proofs of the christian 
miracles, would be a greater prodigy than the mira- 
cles themselves. If we have been successful, the 
signs and wonders of the Gospel might find an im- 
pregnable asylum even in the theory of their arch 
foe, as expounded by himself. 

The hypothesis that a miracle cannot be proved 
by human testimony, because, while such testimony 
is ever deceptive, the laws of nature are forever 
immutable, draws after it, if true, the consequent 
truth that a miracle cannot be proved by the united 
evidence of our own senses. For even our own 
senses are often faithless ; the eye, the ear, and the 
touch frequently beguile. We may imagine that 
we see and hear, and handle the miraculous dem- 
onstration. But, if graduates in the school of infi- 
delity, we must, to be consistent, hold that our vis- 
ual, auricular, and sensitive organs have combined 



hume's objection to miracles, 251 

to betray us. For it is the master dogma of cheer- 
less unbelief, that the physical laws of the universe 
have been fixed and changeless from the beginning ; 
and to believe on the evidence of our misleading 
senses, that the awful uniformity of nature has been 
recklessly violated, would be yielding to the fallible 
predominance over the infallible. 

Supposing the miracle of the five thousand fed 
with the five loaves and two small fishes to have 
been a solemn reality, still the beholders, if chilled 
with the creed of infidelity, could not have yielded 
it the tribute of grateful credence. True, they had 
heard the gracious benediction prefacing the won- 
derful repast ; they had seen the scanty elements 
multiplied by the creative touch ; they had handled 
them with their own hands ; they had felt within 
themselves the satisfying and invigorating influ- 
ences of the ample feast. Yet conscious of the 
fallibility of the senses, and imagining that they 
read the dogma of nature's changeless laws, writ- 
ten, as it were, on the arch of the overhanging 
heavens, they must have been forced to the melan- 
choly inference that the whole beneficent pano- 
rama was but a delusion of the imagination. 

The evidence of our senses is not more demon- 
strative of facts than is often the well-sustained 



252 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



testimony of our fellow-men. Each organ of vis- 
ion, of hearing and of touch, has but a single voice ; 
the testimony of our fellow-men frequently over- 
powers us with its thousand tongues. What Amer- 
ican, though he may not have crossed the Atlantic, 
can doubt the existence of the European continent ? 
Would the evidence of his own senses make his 
" assurance doubly sure ?" What skeptic of this 
western hemisphere can distrust the reality of that 
revolutionary struggle, which purchased our inde- 
pendence ? Scarcely would his conviction be 
strengthened by his youthful reminiscence, that he 
had himself heard the groans of the patriot warriors 
and seen their " garments rolled in blood." 

It little becomes the pigmy lord of earth to repu- 
diate all miracles, because to his microscopic vision 
they seem to disturb the harmony of the creation. 
He stands between " two infinitudes," lost in amaze- 
ment as he gazes on the mysteries of the by-gone 
and coming eternities ; the wheeling orb on which 
he dwells was miraculously brought into being ; he 
himself is " fearfully and wonderfully made." That 
a breathing, moving, thinking, speaking miracle — 
in the midst of a universe of miracles — should dis- 
card the demonstrations authenticating sacred truth, 
because they are miraculous, is a superadded prod- 



hume's objection to miracles. 253 



igy, scarcely less strange than those from which he 
turns so irreverently away. 

The prince of doubters feared to risk his antici- 
pated immortality of fame upon the naked proposi- 
tion, that human testimony is incompetent to es- 
tablish a miracle. In the latter part of his essay, 
so involved throughout in civil war with itself, we 
find superadded to the declaration, that " a miracle 
can never be proved so as to be the foundation of a 
system of religion," the following controlling quali- 
fication ; " For I own that otherwise there may 
possibly be miracles, or violations of the usual 
course of nature, of such a kind as to admit of proof 
from human testimony/' It cannot but be per- 
ceived, that this qualification, by the philosopher 
himself, is a death-blow to his paramount dogma, 
that the immutability of nature's laws is established 
by " a firm and unalterable experience." 

The chieftain of unbelief admits, that any miracle 
may exist and be proved, except a religious miracle. 
He withdraws the ban of infidelity from the proba- 
tion of supernatural signs and wonders, unless the 
signs and wonders have for their object a theologi- 
cal system. Such a distinction is sustained or 
countenanced by no precedent or principle in the 
whole science of evidence. The capacity of a fact 



254 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



to be proved, depends not upon the uses to which it 
may be afterwards applied. A fact, when proved, 
becomes a fixed and dominant truth, operating 
within its sphere, without limitation or stint. A 
miracle is emphatically the truth of God ; for his 
own right hand has wrought it. And who can 
rightfully interpose hindrances of human invention 
to the probation of God's own truth ? Why should 
a miracle be denuded of its susceptibility of verifi- 
cation, common to miracles in general, because its 
Author graciously displayed it to authenticate to his 
creatures a revelation from himself? The design 
or purpose of a supernatural phenomenon cannot 
affect its capability of being proved by human testi- 
mony. All miracles are equally suspensions or 
variations of the physical laws of the universe ; all 
are accomplished alike by the special intervention 
of almighty power ; and all are for objects requir- 
ing, in the estimate of infinite wisdom, that the 
course of nature should be interrupted. 

Suspensions or variations of the laws of nature 
are not intended for concealment; they are not 
enacted in " a corner," or to be hidden " under a 
bushel;" they are public acts, designed by their 
divine Author for promulgation among the dwellers 
upon the earth, and their distant posterity. This 



hume's objection to miracles. 



255 



peculiarly applies to cases where the miracles have 
for their end the authentication of a system of faith. 
How could the purposes of enduring publicity be 
accomplished without the intervention of human 
testimony ? Must the wonderful displays be con- 
tinued from generation to generation ? During the 
whole march of time must the laws of nature stand 
still ? Truthful narratives of miraculous events are 
to be transmitted from age to age, for the edification 
of mankind ; and human testimony is the only ap- 
propriate channel of transmission. But if the signs 
and wonders are of a religious bearing, the infidel 
theory would hermetically seal up this needful chan- 
nel; and consign to "dumb forgetfulness" all by- 
gone miracles, having for their object the salvation 
of man. 

Nor are- the deponents to the christian prodigies 
affected with any personal taint, impeaching their 
credibility. It was never intimated, save in the 
wintry code of skepticism, that moral pureness and 
exalted piety are impediments to the competency 
of witnesses, either in judicial tribunals or before 
the grander inquest composed of the countless 
millions of Christendom. 

Religious miracles are invested with an intrinsic 
probability, which would not apply to miracles of a 



256 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



secular character. The supposititious report sneer- 
ingly imagined by Hume, that after her public death 
and interment, and the coronation of her successor, 
queen Elizabeth had risen from the dead and re- 
sumed the English throne, would have represented 
an idle and wanton violation of the laws of nature, 
for no other purpose than to raise the wonder of 
the world. But the christian miracles were suspen- 
sions or variations of nature's laws, for an object 
worthy of nature's God. Miracles are the appro- 
priate, the probable, and, as it were, the natural ac- 
companiments of a revelation from above. If the 
message of Jesus Christ was of celestial origin, the 
presumption of reason is, that it would have been 
authenticated " with signs and wonders, and with 
divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost." At 
the ushering in of a divine revelation, the absence 
of attesting miracles would have been an event 
stranger than their occurrence. It was confidently 
to be expected that "as the thunderbolt pursues the 
flash," a spiritual illumination bursting forth from 
heaven, would be attended with supernatural dem- 
onstrations, palpable to the senses and affecting to 
the hearts of human kind. 

Hume's philosophy was little better than his the- 
ism, when he urged the intrinsic likelihood that im- 



hume's objection to miracles. 257 

postors, fabricating a novel system of faith, would 
risk their superstructure upon the unstable founda- 
tion of fictitious miracles. Claims to false prodi- 
gies have been, indeed, often engrafted on super- 
stitions previously existing, and lending to the 
deceptions their friendly countenance and active 
support. But no author of an original and isolated 
imposture, hostile to all prevalent systems of belief, 
ever ventured, under the supervision of vigilant 
and implacable enemies, to subject his pretensions 
to the trying ordeal of works claimed to be miracu- 
lous. Suppose that in our own age and country, a 
theological adventurer, denouncing all the existing 
religions of earth, should proclaim himself to be a 
prophet sent from heaven to found a new and ex- 
clusive creed, and, in authentication of his pre- 
tended embassy, should profess to heal the sick, 
raise the dead, and control the elements, by the 
word of his power ; that his boastful demonstrations 
should be open, public, and diffusive as the light, 
and that, instead of avoiding, he should challenge, 
from town to town, from village to village, and 
from city to city, the presence and scrutiny of his 
ever wakeful and multitudinous foes. — How sure, 
how swift, how overwhelming would be his discom- 
fiture ! 



258 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



Should any infidel reasoner object to our suppo- 
sition as referring to an age and country distin- 
guished for intelligence and learning, and for con- 
sequent capacity to detect imposture, we would 
point him to Arabia, the land of fiction, credulity, 
and delusion. No theological adventurer was ever 
more enterprising or sagacious than the false prophet 
of Mecca. But Mohammed dared not submit to 
the test of miracles, his supernatural claims. He 
professed to be greater than Moses or Jesus Christ ; 
yet the Koran is crowded with apologies for his 
acknowledged want of miraculous gifts. In the 
precarious infancy of his fortunes, his friends be- 
sought him, and his foes tauntingly challenged him, 
to authenticate his pretensions to inspiration by 
signs and wonders. But from this desperate at- 
tempt, so sure of speedy and ignominious detection, 
the wily Arab pertinaciously recoiled. He knew, 
he felt the hopelessness of any effort to sustain, 
even among an ignorant and imaginative people, a 
new, exclusive, and uncompromising faith, by coun- 
terfeited miracles, watched by the never- sleeping 
jealousy of scrutinizing enemies. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



THE MIRACLE OF THE NEW BIRTH. 

Eegeneration wrought by special power of Holy Ghost against 
laws of our fallen nature — It is a miracle endorsing and authen- 
ticating Gospel — Each true believer " hath the witness in himself" 
that he has been born again, and that Gospel is true — Miracle 
of new birth evidence to all the world of Gospel's truth — Each 
participant of eucharist makes solemn affirmation by the act of 
participation that, according to his best belief, he has been born 
again — Such affirmation equivalent to deposition in court — These 
depositions amount to many hundreds of millions — Deponents all 
deceivers, or deceived ; or else new birth a reality, and Gospel 
from God — !N"ew birth standing miracle. 

To the Jewish dignitary Jesus Christ declared, 
" Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be 
born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." 
Though this declaration seemed strange to the mas- 
ter in Israel, yet even reason must perceive and 
feel its truth, if, with the Gospel in her hand, she 
will contemplate the subject with the same candor 
and diligence which she is wont to bestow upon 
matters of secular science. 

That man is by nature fearfully depraved is de- 
monstrated, not only by Scripture, but also by the 
profane history of every age and country. The 



260 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



world's annals are written in blood, and stained 
with crime. Nor are the codes of earthly jurispru- 
dence less conclusive of the fall. Courts of law, 
civil and criminal, venerated as they justly are, 
would have been but useless incumbrances, with 
all their compulsive machinery, their remedies for 
violated pacts, their pains, penalties, and punish- 
ments, had man remained pure. Each jail, each 
penitentiary, each state prison, each gallows, bears 
melancholy testimony to the depravity of our apos- 
tate race. To restrain man from plundering and 
murdering his fellow-man, legislation has been 
obliged, at all times and places, to invoke all the 
resources of its wisdom and skill. Nor has human 
wickedness confined itself to the breach of the social 
duties. Had its might been equal to its will, it 
would have scaled the heavens and dethroned the 
Sovereign of the universe. Fallen man is at enmity 
not only with his fellow-creatures, but also with his 
God. If any one is inclined to deem this picture 
exaggerated, let him cast his vision inward, and 
learn its truth by profound and candid communion 
with his own heart. 

Without a radical change of moral nature it is 
impossible that man should be happy here or here- 
after. Sin and bliss dwell not together ; happiness 



THE MIRACLE OF THE NEW BIRTH. 261 



and holiness are twin sisters, whose elements are 
so compounded that they cannot live apart. Crime 
blotted out earth's Eden ; and " except a man be 
born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." 
Should he with his natural heart be admitted into 
the upper sanctuary, it would be no paradise to him. 
How could he join, with lips uncleansed, in the pure 
psalmody of the skies ? And there sits the ever- 
living Jehovah, clothed in the robes of holiness, 
whose eyes are " as a flame of fire." From that 
dread presence the unregenerate sinner would seek 
refuge even in the vaults of despair. Reason her- 
self must perceive that renovation of heart is an in- 
dispensable preparation to admission into the king- 
dom of heaven. 

The regeneration of the soul is not within the 
compass of human effort. Though skilled in theo- 
logical learning, Nicodemus could have devised no 
way in which a fallen creature can be born again. 
Man has accomplished much ; he has moved on- 
ward with gigantic steps in the exploration of the 
universe ; he has tamed into his service the potency 
of steam, and the mightier power of electricity. 
But his own little heart man has never changed. 
Unless touched by grace, it is the same now as it 
was in the days of Cain. The leprosy of moral 



262 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



evil is cureless by sublunary skill. Human science 
has elevated the intellect ; but it wields no lever of 
sufficient compass to lift the carnal soul from the 
depths of spiritual degradation. Heathen Athens 
and Rome were, in all their pride and glory, but 
moral Sodoms. 

Regeneration is a miracle wrought by the Holy 
Ghost. Any suspension or variation of the physi- 
cal laws of the universe is a miracle. The moral 
laws of human nature are just as inflexible as the 
laws of the physical world. The unregenerate man 
is " dead in trespasses and sins." His resurrection 
to spiritual vitality is directly opposed to the es- 
tablished laws of his fallen nature. Unaided hu- 
manity can no more regain its pristine holiness than 
the cataract can re-ascend the mountain height. 
Regeneration is, then, a miracle. And it is a mir- 
acle in its character more astounding than was the 
resurrection from physical death at the grave of 
Lazarus. Of the prodigies which rendered memo- 
rable the journey of the persecuting Saul, from Je- 
rusalem to Damascus, the greatest of all was the 
removal of his " stony heart," and the substitution 
of " an heart of flesh." The light and the voice 
from heaven, and the blindness, and its unearthly 
cure, surpassed not, perhaps, in miraculous grandeur 



THE MIRACLE OF THE NEW BIRTH. 263 

the arrest of the sun in its course. But the conver- 
sion of the heart was a miracle that required -the 
sufferings and death of the incarnate Deity. The 
salvation of the soul could be purchased only by the 
blood of God. 

It has been said that the age of miracles is past. 
The saying is not true. The ordinary miracles of 
the Gospel ceased, indeed, about the end of the first 
century of the christian era. But the extraordinary 
miracle of the new birth has pursued its noiseless, 
majestic, onward course, scattering its demonstra- 
tions throughout the world. All other miracles 
have been superseded and absorbed in this the 
mightiest of them all, as " the stars hide their di- 
minished heads" in the presence of the king of day. 
This wonder of wonders, coeval at least with the 
days of Abel, will maintain its triumphal march until 
the angel, standing with his right foot upon the sea 
and his left foot upon the earth, shall lift his hand to 
heaven and swear by Him that liveth forever and 
ever that time shall be no more. 

The miracle of the new birth incontestably estab- 
lishes the inspiration of the Sacred Oracles. They 
are replete with predictions of the triumphs of the 
Gospel by regenerating grace. Every new birth 
is a fulfilment of scriptural predictions. Prophecy 



264 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

fulfilled, shows the inspiration of the prophet. Un- 
inspired mortality could not penetrate the veil of 
the future. The conversion of the nations by the 
potency of the new birth, shows that the seers who 
in Holy Writ foretold it centuries before, were 
taught of God. The new birth is an epitome of 
the practical truths of Revelation, stamped by the 
Holy Ghost on the human soul. When the be- 
liever meditates on his own renovated aspirations, 
and compares them with the aspirations of the 
pious David, or of the consecrated Paul, he has in- 
ternal evidence of their exact identity. "As in 
water face answereth to face/' # so does the image 
reflected from himself answer to the spiritual origi- 
nal. The accordance between the miniature vol- 
ume of the regenerated heart, and the Volume of 
Inspiration, demonstrates that both are of the same 
divine origin. 

The Gospel is the instrument by which the Holy 
Ghost is wont to effect the miracle of the new birth. 
He would not recognize this instrument as his own, 
if it was the fabrication of impostors. The Spirit 
of Truth, in his miracles of grace, would never 
sanction an impious falsehood. Every time he ap- 



* Proverbs xxvii. 19. 



THE MIRACLE OF THE NEW BIRTH. 265 

plies the Gospel to the regeneration of souls, he 
authenticates its inspiration anew. He most em- 
phatically proclaims its divine origin, when he 
sends it abroad among the nations as the efficient 
organ of universal evangelization. Infidelity will 
scarcely venture to deny that the new birth, if a 
reality, proves the genuineness of the Gospel. 

Regeneration is the seal of heaven stamped upon 
the believing heart. The believer, while in the 
exercise of gracious affections, is intuitively con- 
scious of the divine impress. He who has been 
born again, learns from the whispers of his own 
heart, that he is the child of God. He feels that 
his Saviour has given him to " eat of the hidden 
manna," and presented to him " a white stone/' and 
in the stone " a new name written."* " The hid- 
den manna" is the banquet of redeeming love. 
The " white stone" is the gem from heaven, where- 
on is inscribed his own name; imperceptible, in- 
deed, to physical sight or touch, but palpable to the 
rapt vision of faith. 

We do not mean to intimate, that the christian 
convert is always in the exercise of gracious affec- 
tions. In his passage through the wilderness of 



* Revelation il 17. 
12 



266 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

life, he is sanctified only in part. As sin forfeited 
the primeval paradise, so it may dim and chill the 
renovated paradise of the believer's soul ; it may 
obscure and almost obliterate the celestial image 
which regeneration had implanted there ; it may 
for months, perhaps for years, hide from his bewil- 
dered vision, the impress of heaven's signet ring, 
made on his heart at the day of his espousals. 

But when the believer lives as he ought to live, 
he " hath the witness in himself,"* not only of his 
own regeneration, but also that the Gospel is the 
Word of God. He is conscious that he has "passed 
from death unto life," by the resuscitating influ- 
ences of the Holy Ghost, and the new birth felt in 
his own heart, endorses and authenticates the new 
birth delineated in the Sacred Volume. His natu- 
ral enmity to his Creator is changed into love. He 
loves the divine law, which once frowned upon him 
with the terrors of Sinai. Holiness is unveiled to 
him in its native beauty. He loves the Lord Jesus 
Christ. He regards as "the chiefest among ten 
thousand," Him in whom he once saw " no form nor 
comeliness." He feels that he has been called " out 
of darkness into his marvellous light." With the 



* l John v. 10. 



THE MIRACLE OF THE NEW BIRTH. 267 

convert in the Gospel, blind from his birth, he ex- 
ultingly exclaims, " One thing I know, that whereas 
I was blind, now I see." There are bright mo- 
ments when, with Job, he can say, " I know that 
my Redeemer liveth ;" and, with Paul, " I know 
whom I have believed." In those moments his 
faith in the Gospel depends not upon the prepon- 
derance of nicely balanced probabilities; it is 
passed into knowledge; he "hath the witness in 
himself." 

The true believer is "the temple of the Holy 
Ghost." The Spirit of Truth is his Schoolmaster. 
The indwelling God teaches the verity and power 
of his own Sacred Word to his humblest children, 
not by the ordinary process of ratiocination, but by 
an influence which, like the lightning of heaven, 
" is felt though- it cannot be followed." The de- 
vout peasant who drove his " team a-field" in the 
age and country of Hume, would have risked noth- 
ing by hostile encounter with the Goliah of skepti- 
cism. The infidel, indeed, wielded in his left hand 
the vaunted fallibility of human testimony, and 
grasped in his right the alleged inflexibility of na- 
ture's laws. To this imposing array, the pious 
ploughman could interpose neither the blandish- 
ments of rhetorical diction, the subtileness of logic, 



268 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



nor the treasures of historical learning. Yet with a 
sincerity attested by moistened eyes, he could 
meekly lay on his breast his labor-hardened hand, 
and unfalteringly avouch his intuitive conscious- 
ness — a consciousness imparting courage to brave 
the torturing wheel or the cross of martyrdom — 
that he was himself the recipient of an abiding mir- 
acle, sure as the noonday sun, and more stupendous 
than any which had ever given sight to physical 
blindness or vitality to natural death. 

The evidence of the Gospel's divinity, derived 
from the miracle of the new birth, is not confined 
to the regenerate. It appeals to every human 
heart, regenerate or in a state of nature, and its 
appeal must force admittance, unless the entrance 
is closed and barred by incorrigible prejudice. 

Since the original institution of the eucharist, 
hundreds of millions have partaken of that holy 
ordinance. The opinion has obtained currency in 
the ranks of Protestantism, that the Roman Cath- 
olic creed does not require that conversion should 
precede communion. But the error of this opinion 
clearly appears from the highest authorities of that 
ancient church. The following are extracts from 
the catechism of the council of Trent, published 
by the command of Pope Pius V. 



THE MIRACLE OF THE NEW BIRTH. 269 



" We now come to point out the manner in which the 
faithful should be previously prepared for sacramental com- 
munion. To demonstrate the necessity of this previous 
preparation, the example of the Saviour is to be proposed to 
the faithful. Before he gave to his apostles the sacrament 
of his body and blood, although they were already clean, 
he washed their feet to declare that we must use extreme 
diligence to bring with us to its participation the greatest 
integrity and innocence of soul. In the next place, the 
faithful are to understand that, as he who approaches thus 
prepared and disposed, is adorned with the most ample 
gifts of heavenly grace : so on the contrary, he who ap- 
proaches without this preparation, and without these dis- 
positions, not only derives from it no advantage, but plunges 
his own soul into the most unutterable misery." 

" But when it is said that this sacrament imparts grace, 
it is not intended to mean that to receive this sacrament 
with advantage, it is unnecessary to be previously in a state 
of grace. Natural food can be of no use to a person who is 
already dead: and in like manner the sacred mysteries can 
avail him nothing who lives not in spirit. Hence this sac- 
rament has been instituted under the forms of bread and 
wine, to signify that the object of its institution is, not to 
recall to life a dead soul, but to preserve life to a living 
one." 

" We should also reflect in the silence of our own hearts 
how unworthy we are that God should bestow on us this 
divine gift ; and with the centurion, of whom our Lord de- 
clared, that he found not so great faith in Israel, we should 
exclaim, ' Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter 



270 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

under my roof.' We should also put the question to our- 
selves, whether we can truly say with Peter, 'Lord, thou 
knowest that I love thee ;' and should recollect, that he 
who sat down at the marriage feast without a nuptial gar- 
ment, was cast into exterior darkness, and condemned to 
eternal torments."* 

It has, then, been from the beginning, the estab- 
lished doctrine of Christendom, that participation 
in the Lord's Supper is a public profession of having 
" passed from death unto life." By the act of com- 
munion, each communicant, for himself, has made his 
solemn declaration in the presence of men, angels, 
and God, that, according to his best knowledge and 
belief, founded on his own christian experience, he 
had become the favored recipient of the great ren- 
ovating miracle. This declaration was, at least, 
equal in solemnity to an oath in a court of justice. 
What is it which gives its sanction to a judicial 
oath ? It is not the mere touching of the book by 
the hand or the lips ; it is not the sign, but the thing 
signified; it is the tremendous appeal to the 
Searcher of hearts, that imparts to it its sacred 
character. And is not the sacramental declaration 



* Catechism of Council of Trent, Sacrament of the Eucharist. 
Donovan's Translation, pages 165, 167, 169. 



THE MIRACLE OF THE NEW BIRTH. 



271 



an appeal to the Searcher of hearts, made under cir- 
cumstances at least as awful as those which attend 
the judicial attestation ? Is the altar of our religion 
a less holy place than the bar of our courts ? Is the 
tasting of the flesh and blood of the Son of God, 
even symbolically, less heart-thrilling and soul- 
binding than the touch of the cover of his book? 
True, the sacramental deposition is not, like the ju- 
ridical, written with pen and ink on parchment or 
paper ; but it is registered by the recording angel 
on the everlasting records of heaven. 

These christian depositions are the sacred relics 
of more than eighteen centuries ; they come up to 
us from every clime and every tongue. They are 
the testimonials of the devout living, and of the 
pious dead; they are wafted from each christian 
temple ; they ascend from each christian cemetery 
and church-yard ; they are echoed by the ancient 
ruins of Asiatic cities, and reverberated by the val- 
leys of the young West ; Ethiopia lifts her confirm- 
atory voice, and it is answered from the islands of 
the remotest Pacific. If to these Gospel depositions 
we superadd the long train of saints who preceded 
the birth of Christ, we shall find the witnesses to 
the reality of the new birth swollen to a host that 
baffles the computation of arithmetic. 



272 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

And how is the unregenerate inquirer, professing 
. candor, yet hovering between the twilight of doubt 
and the daylight of truth, to meet and overcome 
these mountains of depositions ? If he is not ready 
to admit, that they prove beyond peradventure the 
miracle of the new birth, and consequently the in- 
spiration of the Gospel, he must maintain, either 
that these hundreds of millions of deposing wit- 
nesses have been wilful deceivers, or else that they 
were themselves all miserably self-deceived. It is 
not enough for him to show that many hypocritical 
or beguiled professors have mingled in " the sacra- 
mental host of God's elect;" he must, to palliate 
his indecision, taint with hypocrisy or self-delusion, 
each and every individual in the whole mighty mass 
of the Old and New Testament saints. Infidelity 
must bend or break, if, along the track of time, a 
single unimpeached and unimpeachable witness is 
found to confirm the prodigy of regeneration, and 
the consequent divinity of the sacred oracles. 

None, it may be presumed, will deliberately con- 
tend that the almost countless millions of deponents 
to the miracle of the new birth, have unanimously 
banded together in a base conspiracy to deceive 
human kind. Extravagant would be the supposi- 
tion that a confederacy of such extent, compounded 



THE MIRACLE OF THE NEW BIRTH. 273 

of hostility to earth and impiety to heaven, had 
pursued, without detection, its triumphant march 
of conscious guilt for near six thousand years, 
"with an eye that never winks and a wing that 
never tires ;•" traversing with more than quixotic 
zeal all lands and seas in quest, not of gain or ag- 
grandizement, but of persecution, torture, and mar- 
tyrdom; proffering nothing to its depraved adhe- 
rents but a life of hypocrisy here, and, unless the 
grave is the place of eternal sleep, sure and inter- 
minable perdition hereafter. 

Can infidelity successfully resort to the other 
branch of the alternative, and maintain that the 
almost innumerable millions of deponents to the 
miracle of the new birth, have been themselves the 
miserable victims of self-delusion, without one soli- 
tary exception in any age, language, or country ? 
We have seen that each christian professor, when 
first admitted to the banquet of redeeming grace, 
deposed for himself individually, that according to 
his best knowledge and belief, he had been made 
the subject of the great renovating marvel. His 
attestation was not prompted by momentary im- 
pulse, or by the ebullition of sudden feeling. 
Weeks, perhaps months, of rigid and honest self- 
examination, doubtless preceded this the most mo- 
12* 



274 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

mentous act of his life. He paused; he deliberated; 
he deposed. The subject attested required no com- 
pass of historical erudition, or profound scientific 
research. He had but to compare with diligence 
and candor the little volume of his own heart with 
the Volume of Revelation. For this examination 
the peasant was as competent as the philosopher. 

At every succeeding return of the feast of love, 
the christian professor confirmed the sacramental 
deposition made by him at his first espousal. 
Months may have intervened between the succes- 
sive ordinances ; but months of renewed and pro- 
found deliberation severed him not from his firm- 
seated hopes. Sometimes, indeed, he was ready to 
succumb under the burden of indwelling sin. In 
his christian warfare, he was conscious of viewless 
foes walking in darkness ; he was conscious, too, 
of a viewless Preserver. When rescued amidst 
the billows of life's tempestuous ocean, he knew, 
like Peter, that it was the hand of his Master which 
saved him. Each advance in experimental relig- 
ion, strengthened his evidence of the regenerating 
miracle. Death came at last to translate him to 
the skies. His dying deposition was made. It 
may have been sealed in blood drawn from him by 
the nails of the cross, or by the devouring teeth of 



THE MIRACLE OF THE NEW BIRTH. 275 



savage beasts ; it may have been perfected at the 
martyr's fire, lighted up as his chariot to heaven ; 
it may have been consummated in the meditative 
and peaceful chamber of protracted illness. Wher- 
ever made, the final deposition of the expiring saint 
breathed forth no longer mere belief. His confi- 
dent hope was transformed to certain knowledge. 
His faith was swallowed up in vision, even before 
he bade the world farewell. 

The evidence to the -miracle of the new birth, 
derived from the experience of the New Testament 
church, had been anticipated by the experience of 
the earlier believers. They had prospectively eaten 
of the same bread, and drank of the same wine, 
which were afterwards distributed by Jesus Christ 
to his disciples in the upper chamber at Jerusalem. 
Enoch and Abraham, and the whole brotherhood 
of the Old Testament saints, were washed in the 
blood of propitiation, long before it began to flow 
in the veins of the infant Emmanuel. They be- 
held afar off the day of the Son of man ; and in 
anticipation of his advent, "confessed that they 
were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." They 
solemnly professed to have been " born again," and 
to have "passed from death unto life." How 
touching, how demonstrative, how overpowering 



276 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

are the depositions of Job, of David, and of Isaiah 
to the reality of the great renovating prodigy ! The 
phenomenon of the new birth was known to Abel 
when he " offered unto God a more excellent sacri- 
fice than Cain."* It has since been manifested to 
the faithful of every age, in every country. Hun- 
dreds of millions of regenerated souls could no 
more have been unanimously mistaken in the ex- 
istence of the phenomenon, than they could have 
been mistaken in the existence of the sun in the 
firmament. 

The honest inquirer after truth will be confirmed 
in the sure conclusion, that the hundreds of mil- 
lions of depositions to the reality of the new birth, 
were not the offspring of self-delusion, by atten- 
tively considering the variety in the stations and 
intellectual qualifications of the deponents. The 
witnesses to the miracle of regeneration, have risen 
up from every class and every progressive grade 
of society. The prince and the peasant ; the cul- 
tivator of science and the tiller of the soil; the 
mathematician and the mechanic ; the poet and the 
philosopher ; the ardent and the dispassionate ; the 
enthusiast and the stoic ; the recluse and the man 



* Hebrews ai 4. 



THE MIRACLE OF THE NEW BIRTH. 277 

of the world; the barbarous and the civilized; have 
all attested the prodigy of regenerating grace 
wrought in their own souls. And were all these 
witnesses, so diverse in social grade, in intellectual 
cast, in mental acquisitions, in temperament of the 
heart, the victims alike of protracted self-delusion ? 
Were the walkers with God of the early East, de- 
ceivers of themselves from the time of their sup- 
posed conversions to the hours of their deaths ? 
Were the holy melodies of Jesse's son but the aber- 
rations of a mind diseased ? Were the prophetic 
visions of the rapt seers but the hallucinations of 
distempered imaginations ? Did the fishermen of 
Judea but dream when they thought they saw the 
transfiguration on the mount, and felt in their own 
souls the illumination of the Holy Ghost? Was 
Stephen in a trance only, when, praying for his 
murderers, he "looked up steadfastly into heaven 
and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on 
the right hand of God ?"* Was Paul — the accom- 
plished scholar — the profound thinker — the over- 
powering reasoner — the more than Demosthenes 
of sacred eloquence — but an insane enthusiast from 
his journey to Damascus until his death of torture 



* Acts vii. 55. 



278 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

in the gardens of Nero ? Has every soldier in the 
glorious army of martyrs been led to the cross, the 
lions, the rack, or the stake, spell-bound in a delu- 
sion of his own forging ? Over the sublime intel- 
lects of Paschal, and Grotius, and Boyle, and New- 
ton, and Hale, and Edwards, and Wilberforce, and 
Chalmers, did an eclipse unceasingly hang, from 
the time of their spiritual renovations, gathering, 
increasing darkness as they approached the portal 
of everlasting rest ? 

The prodigy of regeneration utterly annihilates 
the bold assumption, that miracles are opposed to 
the experience of mankind. With the miraculous 
phenomenon of the new birth — to which all other 
deviations from the established laws of nature were 
but subordinate and subsidiary — human experience 
has been familiar for thousands of years. From the 
days of John Knox, Scotland itself had been dis- 
tinguished by copious effusions of the Holy Ghost. 
Hume lived, and blasphemed, and died, in the midst 
of signs and wonders. Had he cast aside the dis- 
colored and distorting glasses of unbelief, he must 
have seen, even in his own native land, abounding 
demonstrations of the chief of miracles. Since his 
era, the great renovating prodigy has achieved 
triumphs matched only by those of the apostolic 



THE MIRACLE OF THE NEW BIRTH. 279 

age. Regenerating grace is the almighty sceptre 
of the Prince of peace, by which, in the fulness of 
time, he will miraculously accomplish all the glo- 
rious purposes of his incarnation, and extend his 
dominion " from sea to sea, and from the river 
unto the ends of the earth/'* 



* Psalms lxxii. 8. 



CHAPTER XV. 



THE MORAL INCONGRUITIES OF MAN. 

Man in his moral being destitute of harmony of organization belong- 
ing to other creations of God — Is compound of meanness and 
majesty — at once brutal and godlike — Elements of his contrari- 
ous nature in collision with each other — Philosophy could not 
explain the enigma — Bible explains it — Man made upright and 
pure — but sinned and fell — Thoughts on the apostasy — The fall 
the only solution of the mysteries of our being — Sin unnatural 
evil — Usurper of human heart — Man an enemy to God — hence 
he takes his name in vain — and worships idols — Man not origin- 
ally made a God-hater by God himself — Conscience and sin not 
twin brothers of the same birth — Gospel's solution of mysteries 
of our being, proof of its divinity — Cause suggested of God's de- 
lay in final punishment of sin. 

In the constituents of humanity there is not 
found the harmony of organization discoverable in 
the structure of inferior animals. The lord of this 
lower world is compounded of heterogeneous and 
jarring elements. Of him the great poet of nature 
said ; " What a piece of work is man ! how noble 
in reason ! how infinite in faculties ! in form and 
moving how express and admirable ! in action how 
like an angel ! in apprehension how like a God !" 
The poetic picture is truthful. So is the delinea- 
tion of man in the scriptural pages, where he is 



THE MORAL INCONGRUITIES OF MAN. 281 

represented as saying, " to corruption, Thou art my 
father ; to the worm, Thou art my mother and my 
sister/'* With the tiger's ferocity, he commingles 
" the milk of human kindness ;" he is a strange com- 
pound of meanness and of majesty ; at once brutal 
and godlike. The lightning of heaven has become 
his submissive apprentice. And yet this master of 
the oak-cleaving bolt has bowed himself down in 
abject worship to stocks and stones, to " birds and 
four-footed beasts, and creeping things." 

Man is an anomaly in the creation. In all the other 
visible works of God, harmony of organization is the 
distinctive feature. It imparts majesty and grace to 
each wheeling orb of the solar and stellar systems ; 
it forms the music of the spheres. As we pass 
downward to the humblest thing that lays claim to 
animal life, we find harmony of organization in each 
descending grade. Every bird that wings the air, 
every four-footed beast that roams the field, every 
fish that swims the sea, every worm that crawls 
upon the earth, is perfect " after his kind." In the 
vegetable province, too, harmony of organization is 
stamped on every tree, shrub, plant and flower, as 
the sure signet of the almighty hand. Even in the 
mineral kingdom, each substance proclaims, by the 



* Job xvii. 14. 



282 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

harmony of its organization, that God is its author. 
From this great law of nature, man is a mysterious 
exception. In him wild disorder ever reigns ; be- 
tween the bestial and the divine elements of his 
being, an intestine warfare is ceaselessly maintained. 

Thus heterogeneous and discordant in his com- 
position, man is " like the troubled sea when it can- 
not rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt."* 
The ox, when he has satisfied his hunger, and slaked 
his thirst, deliberately chews the cud of content- 
ment as he reposes under the shade of the spreading 
oak. Contentment awaits not the lord of the lower 
creation. Ambition proclaims, " It is not in me 
the wealth of Croesus could not buy it ; the cottage 
knows it not, and it is a stranger to the palace. 
Heathen philosophy once sought to explain the 
phenomenon of our contrarious nature by the sup- 
position that each of human kind has two distinct 
souls, the one inclined to soar, and the other to 
sink ; the one bent on the abject, the other aspiring 
to the sublime. The Persian Zoroaster vainly en- 
deavored to solve the enigma by placing over the 
race of mortals two ruling and discordant deities, 
personifying respectively the two opposing prin- 
ciples of good and of evil. 



* Isaiah lvii. 20. 



THE MORAL INCONGRUITIES OF MAN. 283 

The contrarieties of humanity constitute a prod- 
igy at which philosophy has gazed and wondered 
ever since she began to think. But with all her 
boasted sagacity, she was unable to expound the 
marvel. Without Revelation's clue man stands 
forth, in the midst of the wonders of the visible 
universe, himself the greatest wonder. It is the 
Bible alone that can instruct him in the deep and 
dark mysteries of his own being. The scriptural 
solution is a simple one. It announces that in the 
beginning God breathed into his nostrils the breath 
of life from the pure fountain of his own vitality ; 
that, made in the image, and after the likeness of 
his Creator, man speedily apostatized and fell from 
his primeval state of innocence ; and that sin 

" Brought death into the world and all our woe." 

That man is now a sinful creature, is a truth 
written, as it were, with a sunbeam upon the tablets 
of the human heart. Candor must needs read it 
there if she will but turn her vision inward. That 
God is a wise and holy being is another truth which 
the modern skeptic will not presume to deny. Rev- 
elation, though it touches not the heart, must, never- 
theless, enlighten the understanding of all who are 
brought up in a christian land. None thus enlight- 



284 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



ened dare venture to predicate of the Ruler of the 
universe the vices and follies imputed to its fabu- 
lous deities by ancient polytheism. Modern infi- 
delity, educated in a christian country, has not the 
courage to be altogether pagan. She is obliged, 
however reluctantly, to array her god in the attri- 
butes of wisdom and holiness. Instead of degrad- 
ing him to the rank of Jupiter or Mars, her very 
pride leads her to claim for him affinity in moral 
perfections to the Jehovah of the Bible. 

As, then, the Ruler of the universe is a being of 
infinite wisdom and holiness, reason itself must in- 
fer that he w T ould not with his own right hand have 
formed a race of sinful creatures, and fitted up for 
their inheritance this fair province of the universal 
empire. Not even an earthly prince would volun- 
tarily incorporate into his kingdom a colony of 
men so utterly depraved as to render it certain that 
they must become disturbers of his peace and rebels 
against his authority. Treason is a weed that may 
spring up in the goodliest soil ; but a wise and 
righteous governor would not of his own free 
choice transplant it into the heart of his dominions. 
The supposition that God was the original author 
of sin, is a libel upon his acknowledged perfections. 
The scriptural account of the primitive innocency 



THE MORAL INCONGRUITIES OF MAN. 285 



of human kind is, therefore, confirmed by the de- 
ductions of enlightened reason. 

If, then, man came pure and perfect from the 
hands of his Creator, whence arose the fearful apos- 
tasy which stained the earliest pages of secular 
history, and has changed the paradise of earth into 
a vast chaos of moral ruins ? This is an enigma 
which reason could never have solved. But rea- 
son, enlightened by the Bible, ought to perceive 
and feel the justness of the inspired solution. Man 
fell, because man was created a free agent. From 
the like cause fell the angels. The celestial spirits 
" which kept not their first estate," and the prime- 
val ancestors of our race, became sinners, not by 
creation or from compulsive destiny, but from their 
own spontaneous choice. 

And how could infinite wisdom and infinite holi- 
ness have prevented the catastrophe either in heaven 
or on earth, except by abridging the freedom of 
creature volition? But without freedom of voli- 
tion, angels and men would have been only ma- 
chines. God made his creatures to worship and 
serve their Creator. But how could they have 
rendered him acceptable worship or service with- 
out freedom of will? What pleasure would the 
Infinite Spirit have derived from the incense or 



286 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

hallelujahs of mere breathing, moving, speaking 
machinery? It is the will that constitutes the 
essence of piety below and of holiness above. But 
there can be no exercise of the will where lib- 
erty of choice is wanting. If sin emanated from 
the abuse of the freedom of creature volition, the 
abridgment of that freedom would, doubtless, have 
caused a greater evil in the empire of God. Lib- 
erty is the choicest boon imparted by the Creator 
to his intelligent creation. It constitutes the charm 
of earth and the bliss of heaven. Doubtless Ga- 
briel was just as free as the prince of darkness to 
have apostatized. We suppose that nothing cre- 
ated, save those purchased by the blood of Christ, 
is secure against the possibility of falling. 

Unbelief has cavilled at the hypothesis of Adam's 
posterity suffering from the delinquency of their 
primitive ancestors. But how could that conse- 
quence have been averted ? The sin of Eden rad- 
ically polluted the stock of humanity in all its ele- 
ments, physical and moral. The children of that 
polluted lineage, necessarily participated of its im- 
purities ; they were the natural heirs of the ills of 
which sin was the prolific parent; nothing but a 
miracle could have saved them from falling with 
the stock from whence they issued. By the sure 



THE MORAL INCONGRUITIES OF MAN. 287 

course of nature, Ethiopians must be born of Ethi- 
opians. Had spiritual generation been ordained 
for hell, devils must needs have begotten devils. 
Spirits of light and of holiness could not have 
sprung from the foul embraces of fiends. 

Man's apostasy from pristine holiness, is the only- 
key that can unlock the mysteries of his present 
condition. In strict accordance with the scriptu- 
ral narrative of his original innocency and subse- 
quent fall are the existing phenomena of our being. 
The proofs of some great spiritual convulsion in 
the moral world, are no less cogent than the proofs 
of some great physical convulsions in the natural. 
In the chaos of fallen humanity, relics are every- 
where to be found of its primeval grandeur. Though 
a ruined creature, man is majestic even in ruins. 
The fall has impaired, but not utterly effaced, the 
divine image stamped on him at his creation. 
Hence his lofty, though unsatisfied aspirations; 
hence earth's inability to fill his capacious soul ; 
hence his ceaseless longings after immortality, even 
where the Gospel never beamed, and where the 
grave had cast its impenetrable shade over the un- 
discovered country beyond it. 

How noble must have been that being for whom 
God spent six days in creating a world ! Yet with 



288 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

the pristine divinity of our nature, sin has commin- 
gled its own debasing alloy ; and he who is the 
"wisest, brightest," is also the "meanest" animal 
of the visible universe. The riddle of mortality 
has been the marvel of almost sixty centuries ; its 
labyrinths can be explored only by the lamp of 
Revelation. Aided by that lamp, the explorer, 
though he may doubt whether it was lighted from 
above, will find the vestiges of the fall even more 
palpable than the vestiges of the flood. The vol- 
ume of human nature echoes back the truth of the 
Volume of Grace. 

The candid inquirer, if he will carefully dissect 
and examine the constituent elements of sin, must 
discover intrinsic proofs that it was an usurper of 
the human heart, and not its original sovereign. 

Sin is an unnatural evil. It is an intruder into 
our sphere. In all her works nature teaches obe- 
dience to superior power. Each planet of the solar 
system obeys the parent sun ; the parent sun him- 
self, with all his train of satellites, yields fealty to 
some mightier orb ; the whole panorama of worlds 
hails the benignant domination of their common 
Architect. As we pass downward to the inferior 
ranks of animal existence, we still find obedience to 
superior power the paramount law of nature. In 



THE MORAL INCONGRUITIES OF MAN. 289 



the brute creation instinct is heaven's vicegerent ; 
and from its ruling sway where is the bird, or four- 
footed beast, or creeping thing that withholds its 
allegiance ? The analogies of the visible creation 
confirm the scriptural teaching, that this first and 
universal law of nature was incorporated into the 
original organization of man. Nor was his subse- 
quent rebellion against rightful sovereignty less 
unnatural and monstrous than would be the phe- 
nomenon 

" Should earth unbalanced from her orbit fly, 
Planets and suns run lawless through the sky." 

Sin is enmity to God. Disguise it as he will, the 
unregenerate man is a foe to his Creator. He may 
view with complacency a poetic deity of his own 
fashioning; he might have loved the Bacchus or 
the Mars, the Venus or the Minerva of pagan my- 
thology ; but from a God of awful justice, inflexible 
truth, and immaculate holiness, " that will by no 
means clear the guilty," his spirit turns away in 
terror and aversion. In open breach of the divine 
command, he wantonly takes God's holy name in 
vain. This offence to the personal dignity of heav- 
en's King lacks even the miserable plea of temp- 
tation. It gratifies no passion ; it satiates no lust ; it 
13 



290 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



is but the spontaneous outbreak of ever- restless ani- 
mosity against the High and Holy One. Had the 
heathen code forbidden the familiar use of the name 
of Jove, the interdiction would have found no op- 
position in the carnal heart. We are not wont to 
utter without veneration the name of a Howard 
or a Washington. But in defiance of the terrors of 
Sinai, the name of the august Ancient of Days is 
made, in christian lands, the jest of the public street, 
and the seasoner of bar-room ribaldry. 

Idolatry is the lineal offspring of deep-rooted hos- 
tility to Jehovah. It is an offence of the heart, 
rather than of the head. The nations became idol- 
aters, not so much from sottishness of intellect, as 
because " they did not like to retain God in their 
knowledge." Men bowed down to stocks and to 
stones, to leeks and to onions, less in ignorance, than 
in contempt of that omnipresent Essence, in whom 
they lived, and moved, and had their being ; whom 
they heard in the warbling grove, and in the thun- 
der's roar; whom they saw in every green, and 
every snow-clad field, in each clear evening's can- 
opy, and in each bright morning's sun. 

And was this deadly enmity to its Creator an 
original element of the human soul ? Was man in 
his primeval organization made a God-hater by God 



THE MORAL INCONGRUITIES OF MAN. 291 

himself? Did Infinite Holiness form a new world, 
and light up its " queen of night," and its " king of 
day," for the accommodation of a race of intelli- 
gences, constituted rebels, blasphemers, and idola- 
ters, by the fundamental laws of their being ? Such 
a supposition would impugn alike the principles of 
revealed and of natural theism. The oracles of 
reason, and the oracles of Revelation, conduct to the 
self-same conclusion. God made man upright and 
holy, but sin beguiled and destroyed him. In the 
beginning the Lord of the harvest sowed good 
wheat in his fields ; yet tares sprung up and choked 
it. And when we behold the poisonous weeds cov- 
ering and desolating the face of the earth, we must 
in candor say, as the Lord himself said in the Gos- 
pel parable, " an enemy hath done this." 

Conscience is an element of man, unknown to 
the subordinate creation. It is an active and pow- 
erful principle of human nature, forming often the 
check of vice, where no other restraint could oper- 
ate. It was ordained the sentinel of heaven in the 
bosom of mortals. Outliving the ravages of the 
great moral destroyer, it has existed in every age, 
and been felt in every land. The contrariety be- 
tween conscience and sin, strongly indicates that 
they were not twin brothers, brought into being by 



292 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



the same effort of creative power. Their discor- 
dant qualities betray a diversity of origin ; the one 
bears the mark of heaven, the other the stamp of 
hell. Unbiased reason must perceive and feel the 
scriptural truth, that it was the fall which intro- 
duced sin into our sphere, while conscience is a 
surviving ray of the divinity originally imparted to 
the lord of the terrestrial creation. 

There is a completeness in the scriptural solution 
of our contrarious state, which proves the solution 
to be the work of God. It bears no marks of hu- 
man littleness or contrivance. It possesses an orig- 
inality, grandeur, simplicity, and truthfulness, de- 
monstrative of its heavenly source. Reason itself, 
enlightened though unregenerated by the Bible, 
must perceive that a creature, originally formed in 
the divine image, and subsequently corrupted and 
debased by sin, would be likely to exhibit the same 
discordant phenomena everywhere exhibited by the 
generations of men. And such a creature must of 
necessity be restless as the troubled sea. At en- 
mity with his Maker, it would be impossible that 
he should be in amity with himself. 

The scriptural explanation of the enigma of our 
moral condition, is decisive proof that the Bible 
was inspired by God. Sound was the logic of the 



THE MORAL INCONGRUITIES OF MAN. 293 

Samaritan woman, when, leaving her water-pot at 
Jacob's well, she went into the city and proclaimed 
to her astonished acquaintance, " Come see a man 
which told me all things that ever I did : is not 
this the Christ ?"* His startling communications 
well attested the presence of one who knew the 
secrets of the heart. But not less impervious to 
mortal ken were the profound mysteries of our 
contrarious nature. Had the Bible been sustained 
by no miraculous demonstrations, and had it con- 
tained no other preternatural revelation, its solution 
of these otherwise inexplicable mysteries would 
have authenticated its claim to divinity. 

Profane history has recorded that, in the first 
century of Christianity, the superb cities of Pom- 
peii and Her<Milaneum were buried fathoms deep 
by a sudden eruption of Vesuvius. The calamity 
was contrary to experience ; the cities had passed 
scathless through fourteen centuries, without any 
unfriendly demonstration from their seemingly 
peaceful neighbor. Nor has the mountain since 
disgorged a fiery deluge of the like awful magni- 
tude. Skeptical philosophy, bound by its creed to 
reject whatever is opposed to experience, might, 



* John iv. 29. 



294 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



perhaps, ere this, have begun to regard the appal- 
ling narrative of the volcanic devastation as a fa- 
ble, or at least an exaggeration of the olden time, 
had not its truth been confirmed by modern exca- 
vations. The exploration of the discovered ruins, 
demonstrates the melancholy catastrophe and former 
magnificence of the buried towns. 

Before unbelief finally rejects the scriptural ac- 
count of the original perfection and subsequent 
apostasy of man, let her profoundly meditate upon 
the moral ruins of our race, so strangely com- 
pounded of the celestial and the grovelling. How 
dissimilar is this heterogeneous and contrarious 
mass to the other visible works of the great Archi- 
tect ! Where, in its discordant elements, is to be 
found that harmony of organization* which consti- 
tutes the unerring mark of the almighty hand. 
The grandeur of humanity claims kindred with the 
skies; its abject vileness can scarcely aspire to 
brotherhood with the brute. The lord of earth 
came not thus from the hands of his Creator. As 
the physical ruins of the Neapolitan cities demon- 
strate at once their volcanic overthrow and prime- 
val splendor, so do' the moral ruins of man betoken 
alike his original majesty and melancholy fall. 

Another phenomenon, akin to that already dis- 



THE MORAL INCONGRUITIES OF MAN. 295 

cussed, consists in the fact that the race of sinful 
mortals have not, ere this, been utterly extermi- 
nated. The continued wickedness of man, and the 
long pause of retributive vengeance, present an 
enigma not to be explained by the light of nature. 
That almighty justice should have permitted open 
and high-handed rebellion, to enjoy for thousands 
of years one entire and beautiful province of the 
general empire, is a dark problem which reason 
cannot solve without an open Bible before her. 
It is in the history of the great atonement alone, 
studied by the optics of the Gospel, that she can 
find the solution of the otherwise unfathomable 
mystery. 

Even in the hours of their first moral night, the 
star of Bethlehem shed its cheering ray on the 
apostate pair. Salvation has ever since been pur- 
suing its majestic march, sometimes with silent, 
sometimes with resounding steps, towards its migh- 
ty consummation. Sinners have been spared that 
the cross might be glorified ; the bolt of retribution 
has been delayed, that all the predicted triumphs 
of redeeming love might be achieved. But when 
the wheat of Emmanuel's harvest shall be fully 
gathered into the garners of blessedness, the tares 
sown by the prince of darkness, and springing up 



296 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



with such baneful luxuriance in the rank soil of sin, 
shall be collected together and burned with un- 
quenchable fire. God's mysterious forbearance in 
the punishment of the rebellious world, thus affords 
another instance where, to explain the book of na- 
ture and providence, it is needful to invoke the 
Book of Revelation. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 

Early and rapid spread of Gospel proved by Gospel itself, and by 
secular and ecclesiastical histories — Formidable impediments to 
its progress — was exclusive and uncompromising — opposed to 
prejudices and expectations of Jews — Country of its origin awak- 
ened prejudices of gentiles — Heathen superstition deeply in- 
trenched in minds of nations — Retainers of polytheism roused 
themselves to oppose invasion of Christianity — Recoiling from 
open argument, they employed foulest slanders — Polytheism 
closely interwoven with civil government — which was invoked 
and came to her rescue — Roman empire embraced whole civil- 
ized world — Sufferings in Nero's gardens specimens of other suf- 
ferings — General population joined in persecuting Christians — 
Intrinsic impediments Gospel had to encounter — Opposed to 
pride, passions, and propensities of fallen man — Gospel made 
the moral reformation of its votaries a test of its truth — and that 
in an age of universal corruption — Human instrumentahty em- 
ployed in spread of Gospel inadequate to exigency — its promul- 
gators a few Jewish peasants — the most despised members of a 
despised nation — Contrast between martial conquests and the 
conquests achieved by Gospel. 

The book entitled " The Acts of the Apostles," 
was not composed and embodied in the Sacred 
Canon merely to gratify historical curiosity. 
Prompted by the Holy Ghost, it was designed to 
show that God, by miraculously aiding the dissemi- 
nation of the faith of Jesus Christ, recognized it as 

13* 



298 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



divine. The Gospel is its own witness to its won- 
derful spread. The earliest record of the triumphs 
of primitive Christianity is found in the Inspired 
Volume. We may, therefore, for the purposes of 
our argument, classify the promulgation of the Gos- 
pel among its internal evidences, without any rep- 
rehensible invasion of the extraneous department 
of the christian proofs. 

In the first chapter of " The Acts," the historian 
states that, at the time of the ascension, the num- 
ber of the disciples assembled was about one hun- 
dred and twenty. In the second chapter he affirms, 
that at the season of pentecost, which was only ten 
days afterwards, three thousand converts were 
simultaneously added to the infant church. In the 
fourth chapter it appears that the number of be- 
lievers had increased to " about five thousand." In 
the fifth chapter it is stated, " And believers were 
the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men 
and women." The sixth chapter superadds, " And 
the word of God increased, and the number of the 
disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly ; and a 
great company of the priests were obedient to the 
faith." After the twelfth chapter, the evangelical 
historian dwells almost exclusively upon the pro- 
gress of the great apostle to the gentiles. But it is 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 299 



not to be hence inferred, that the other apostles 
remained inactive, or that the results of their labors 
were unworthy to be recorded. Even the limited 
details contained in the book of " The Acts," show 
that during the twenty-eight years of which it 
briefly treats, the religion of the cross had pervaded 
Judea, Samaria, the districts of Lesser Asia, Greece, 
the islands of the iEgean Sea, the northern coast 
of Africa, and even the imperial capital of all the 
world. 

If we pass from the Sacred Pages to the writings 
of hostile polytheists, we find unequivocal demon- 
strations of the rapid advance of primitive Christi- 
anity. The celebrated passage from Tacitus, 
copied in a preceding chapter, bears with conclu- 
sive force upon this branch of our subject. In 
narrating the circumstances of Nero's conflagra- 
tion, which happened in the thirtieth year after the 
ascension, and which the tyrant, though himself the 
incendiary, basely imputed to the christians, the 
Roman historian, after stating that they had de- 
rived their origin and name from Christ, who in the 
reign of Tiberius, had suffered death under the sen- 
tence of the procurator, Pontius Pilate, thus pro- 
ceeds ; " For a while this dire superstition was 
checked; but it again burst forth, and not only 



300 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



spread itself over Judea, the first seat of the mis- 
chievous sect, but was even introduced into Rome, 
the common asylum which receives and protects 
whatever is impure, whatever is atrocious. The 
confessions of those who were seized, discovered a 
vast multitude of their accomplices ; and they were 
all convicted, not so much for the crime of setting 
fire to the city as for their hatred to human kind." 

The expression, " vast multitude," in this pas- 
sage, when used by an author so scrupulously op- 
posed to exaggeration as Tacitus, implies, that at 
the time of the conflagration, the number of chris- 
tians in the bosom of the Roman capital had be- 
come immense. The passage contains other sig- 
nificant expressions, reaching still nearer to the 
time of the crucifixion. "For awhile this dire 
superstition was checked ; but it again burst forth" 
and overspread Judea. The terms " burst forth," 
from the pen of the ever-guarded Roman annalist, 
indicate something more than a slow and gradual 
diffusion of what he styles the " dire superstition." 
He meant to signify that its reappearance and 
spread were sudden, extraordinary, prodigious. 
How corroborative of the scene of pentecost and 
of the other apostolic triumphs is the language of 
the heathen Tacitus ! 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 301 



The letter of Pliny, and the reply of the emperor, 
set forth at large in one of our previous chapters, 
are not less demonstrative of the early and wonder- 
ful progress of the Gospel. Pliny's letter was written, 
as we have seen, about seventy years after the 
ascension. He was governor of Pontus and Bithyn- 
ia, two Asiatic provinces, remote from the birth- 
place of the new religion. He sought imperial in- 
structions to regulate his treatment of the christians, 
who were overspreading the countries subject to 
his authority. In speaking of them he says, 
" Others named by an informer first affirmed and 
then denied the charge of Christianity ; declaring 
that they had been christians, but had ceased to be 
so, some three years ago, others still longer, some 
even twenty years ago." Hence it appears that 
the evangelical faith had then been of more than 
twenty years' standing, in the provinces of which 
Pliny was procurator. He proceeds; "For the 
number of culprits is so great as to call for serious 
consultation. Many persons are informed against 
of every age and of both sexes, and more still will 
be in the same situation. The contagion of the 
superstition hath spread, not only through cities, 
but even villages and the country. Not that I 
think it impossible to check and to correct it. The 



302 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



success of my endeavors hitherto forbids such de- 
sponding thoughts; for the temples, once almost 
desolate, begin to be frequented, and the sacred so- 
lemnities, which had long been intermitted, are 
now attended afresh ; and the sacrificial victims 
are now sold everywhere, which could once scarce 
find a purchaser." 

These extracts show that, within about seventy 
years after the ascension, the religion of the Cruci- 
fied had pervaded the sequestered regions of Bi- 
thynia and Pontus ; that it had made " almost deso- 
late" the temples of the false gods ; that it had 
caused their profane solemnities to be long " inter- 
mitted and that it had even rendered unsalable 
their "sacrificial victims." The Roman scholar 
speaks of " the contagion of the superstition ;" thus 
selecting, to express the expansive power of the 
Gospel, some of the most potent terms known to 
human speech. There is no pretence that the 
streams of salvation had not overflowed the other 
provinces of the Roman empire at least as early 
and copiously as they did the distant countries 
where the sagacious Pliny had been commissioned 
to check the inundation. 

The ecclesiastical history of the first three cen- 
turies is replete with proofs of the Gospel's aston- 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 



303 



ishing spread. Its triumphant march from land to 
land, and from continent to continent, forms the 
glowing theme of all the christian fathers. Take 
as an example the following extract from Justin 
Martyr, who wrote about one hundred and six 
years after the ascension : " There is not," says he, 
" a nation, either Greek or barbarian, or of any 
other name, even of those who wander in tribes and 
live in tents, among whom prayers and thanksgiv- 
ings are not offered to the Father and Creator of 
the Universe, by the name of the crucified Jesus." 
Take as another example the following extract 
from Clement of Alexandria, who wrote about 
fifty-five years after Justin Martyr. He says, 
" The philosophers were limited to Greece, and 
their particular retainers ; but the doctrine of the 
Master of Christianity was not circumscribed to 
Judea, but spread throughout the whole world, in 
every nation, and village, and city, both of Greeks 
and barbarians, converting separate individuals 
and whole houses ; having already brought over to 
the truth not a few of the philosophers themselves. 
If the Greek philosophy is interdicted by law, it 
immediately disappears ; whereas, though from the 
first appearance of Christianity, kings and tyrants, 
governors and presidents, with their whole train, 



304 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

and with the populace on their side, have endeav- 
ored with their whole force to exterminate it, yet 
doth it flourish more and more." None will deny 
that, early in the fourth century, the once despised 
and persecuted faith of the cross ascended the 
throne of the Caesars, and became the established 
religion of the Roman empire. 

Further proofs of the rapid and wide diffusion of 
Christianity, long ere it grasped the imperial scep- 
tre, would be useless. Its astounding spread was 
the wonder of the world. It bears on its face the 
impress of the Omnipotent. But the assurance of 
divine agency in the early promulgation of the 
Gospel, will be rendered " doubly sure" by an ex- 
amination of the formidable impediments it had to 
encounter, and the feebleness of the human means 
employed for its advancement. 

The impediments interposed to the primitive 
spread of our holy religion, would have appalled 
and confounded the stoutest heart, unless sustained 
by that heaven-born faith which, like its sister char- 
ity, "believeth all things, hopeth all things, endur- 
eth all things." Christianity w T as exclusive and 
uncompromising. It waged a war not merely of 
conquest, but of extermination against error in its 
diversified modifications. Hence it drew down 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 305 

upon its head the united vengeance of all the 
priesthoods of earth. The Jewish hierarchy exer- 
cised over the national mind controlling domina- 
tion. They had immemorially taught the people 
to expect that the advent of the Messiah of the Old 
Testament would be accompanied by worldly pomp 
and power ; that he would break asunder the Ro- 
man yoke, and restore his country to the glories of 
the age of Solomon. Christianity came into direct 
collision with these long-cherished expectations. 

Born in a manger and wrapped in its straw, the 
Messiah of the Gospel spent his youth and early 
manhood in the laborious workshop of a poor me- 
chanic. At the commencement of his public min- 
istrations, he selected for his companions fishermen 
and publicans ; he was " meek and lowly in heart ;" 
he had " not where to lay his head ;" he proclaimed 
that his " kingdom was not of this world." No 
wonder that he was rejected of his countrymen. 
No wonder that when he appeared as a prophet in 
the place of his youthful domicil, " all they in the 
synagogue" "were filled with wrath, and rose up 
and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the 
brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that 
they might cast him down headlong."* No won- 



* Luke iv. 28, 29. 



306 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



der that the multitudes sometimes took up stones to 
stone him, and sometimes cried out, " Crucify him, 
Crucify him." 

Yet even Tacitus affirms, that the religion of 
Christ, though checked for a time by his death as a 
malefactor, " again burst forth," and overspread 
Judea. To suppose that this resistless outbreak 
was produced by the followers of the Crucified, 
without almighty aid, would violate the fixed prin- 
ciples of the Jewish character. Nothing is more 
inflexible than Hebrew prejudice. If any one 
doubts the truth of this position, let him attempt to 
christianize an Israelite of the present day by the 
force of reasoning. The granite of the Jewish 
heart, like the rock of Horeb, would have been pen- 
etrated only by a rod of heavenly temperament. 

As it entered the domains of polytheism the Gos- 
pel encountered hindrances no less formidable. In 
gentile estimation, the place of its origin tainted it 
with suspicion. Greek, Roman, and barbarian 
united in their common detestation of the Hebrew 
race. They deemed Palestine the birth-place and 
the home of superstitions, alike hostile to earth and 
to heaven. Any theological creed emanating from 
that despised and abhorred land must have sunk 
under its own weight, if sustained only by human 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 307 

instrumentality. But national prejudice was not 
the chief obstacle that impeded the introduction of 
Christianity into pagan countries. 

It is a fallacy to suppose that its ancient super- 
stition sat lightly upon the heathen world. Though 
rejected by some few skeptical philosophers, it had 
fastened itself upon the hearts of the millions as 
with hooks of steel. " The religion of the nations," 
says Gibbon, "was not merely a speculative doc- 
trine, professed in the schools or preached in the 
temples. The innumerable deities and rites of 
polytheism were closely interwoven with every cir- 
cumstance of business or pleasure, of public or of 
private life ; and it seemed impossible to escape the 
observance of them, without at the same time re- 
nouncing the commerce of mankind, and all the 
offices and amusements of society."* The lares 
and penates, those divinities of the fire-side, were 
endeared to the soul by the tenderest associations. 
The pagan faith was associated with the loved 
memory of the dead, supposed to be in the fruition 
of its fabled elysium. Poetry, painting and sculp- 
ture had combined to deck it in all their charms. 
It went with its votaries to their haunts of amuse- 



* Gibbon, vol. ii. pp. 285, 286. 



308 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



ment. The public games, shows, processions, and 
festivals were essential parts of the religion of the 
state, designed no less for the honor of the gods 
than for the entertainment of men. The priests 
of idolatry were supported by the rents of conse- 
crated lands, and by liberal contributions from 
the public treasury ; they were gorgeously clothed 
in robes of purple, rolled in magnificent chariots, 
and ravished the people with frequent and sump- 
tuous feasts. Polytheism was the patroness of 
the arts, fine and mechanical. She munificently 
rewarded the painter and the sculptor, and gave 
employment and bread to the humbler trades that 
subserved idolatrous worship. 

The satellites, retainers, and dependants of the 
ancient faith, roused all their energies to rescue 
their nursing mother from the inroad of the Gospel. 
Christianity had denounced her oracles, sought to 
prostrate her altars, proclaimed her priests to be im- 
postors and her gods to be devils. It was a struggle 
for life. Polytheism must destroy her invading foe 
or be herself destroyed. From the open field of 
honest argument, the votaries of superstition re- 
coiled; they insidiously resorted to the grossest 
misrepresentations ; they invoked the basest slan- 
ders ; they contaminated the air with the foulest 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 309 

calumnies ; they endeavored to inflict mortal 
wounds by arrows dipped in the deadliest poison. 
Take the following as a sample of the atrocious 
libels with which they sought to overwhelm the in- 
fant church. Of its holy feast of the eucharist, " It 
was asserted that a new-born infant entirely cov- 
ered over with flour was presented, like some mys- 
tic symbol of initiation, to the knife of the proselyte, 
who unknowingly inflicted many a secret and mor- 
tal wound on the innocent victim of his error ; that 
as soon as the cruel deed was perpetrated, the sec- 
taries drank up the blood, greedily tore asunder the 
quivering members, and pledged themselves to 
eternal secresy by a mutual consciousness of 
guilt."* 

Polytheism was closely interwoven with the gov- 
ernment of the state. The sacerdotal offices were 
sought and held by the most illustrious citizens; 
the blood of royalty was often commingled with the 
blood of the priesthood Religion had pervaded all 
the concerns of life, public as well as private. War 
was not declared or peace concluded without the 
sanction of augury and the solemnities of sacrifice, 
in which the magistrate, the senator, and the soldier 



* Gibbon, vol. ii. p. 388. 



310 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



were obliged to participate. The oracles of super- 
stition were believed to command the secrets of 
fate. Success in arms was celebrated by thanks- 
giving to the Olympian divinities ; national calami- 
ties were to be averted by fasting and humiliation. 
The hierarchy were supposed to be the sole medi- 
ators between earth and heaven. An alliance de- 
fensive and offensive had immemorially existed be- 
tween idolatry and the civil government. Pressed 
by the invasion of Christianity, polytheism implo- 
ringly invoked the sympathy and protecting arm of 
the sovereign power. Nor was the invocation in 
vain. 

At the time of the crucifixion, and for ages after- 
wards, the Roman empire embraced the whole civ- 
ilized world. Its despot ruled with a rod of iron, 
from the Euphrates to the Western Ocean, and 
from the frozen north to the regions of the equator. 
Stimulated by the pagan priesthood the imperial 
government employed, for three centuries, its co- 
lossal power to extinguish forever the christian 
name. Its auxiliaries were the dungeon, the cross, 
the flames, and the fury of wild beasts. To its 
almost omnipotent might it superadded a sort of 
terrestrial omnipresence. For where, save " in 
deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 311 

the earth/'* could the hunted saints find refuge from 
its destroying wrath ? 

If the tremendous realities of the persecutions in- 
flicted on the faithful by pagan Rome, are not 
vividly impressed on the recollection of the reader, 
let him turn once more to the passage we have 
transcribed from Tacitus. That heathen author 
thus describes the sufferings of the christians under 
Nero. " They died in torments, and their torments 
were embittered by insult and derision. Some 
were nailed on crosses ; others sewed up in the 
skins of wild beasts and exposed to the fury of dogs ; 
others again, smeared over with combustible mate- 
rials, were used as torches to illuminate the dark- 
ness of the night." If it be urged that Nero was a 
cruel tyrant, and that no general inference can be 
drawn from his example, we turn to the persecu- 
tions under the benevolent Trajan, and his classic 
governor. In his letter to the emperor, hereinbe- 
fore set forth, Pliny states, that he had uniformly put 
to death all christians who refused to renounce their 
faith, and execrate their Redeemer, and that to ex- 
tort the secrets of the sect, he had deemed it fitting 
" to inquire by torture from two females, who 



* Hebrews xi. 38. 



312 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



who were said to be deaconesses" — doubtless ven- 
erable for their age as well as for their piety. And 
we have seen that his imperial master commences 
his reply with these memorable words, " You have 
done perfectly right, my dear Pliny." 

The Roman government, and the immediate re- 
tainers of polytheism, were not the only actors in 
the long drama of persecution. For ages the gene- 
ral population of the empire adhered to the ancient 
faith, and joined the powers of despotism in chas- 
ing down as animals of prey the unoffending chris- 
tians. Sometimes, when the civil authorities had 
paused in their fierce onset, the infuriated mass- 
es, impatient at the law's delay, took into their 
own rude hands the work of summary vengeance. 
Affectation of historic candor has extorted the 
following confession even from the pen of the in- 
fidel Gibbon : — 

" In a large and tumultuous assembly," says he, " the 
restraints of fear and shame, so forcible on the minds of in- 
dividuals, are deprived of the greatest part of their influence. 
The pious christian, as he was desirous to obtain or to es- 
cape the glory of martyrdom, expected either with impa- 
tience or with terror the stated returns of the public games 
and festivals. On those occasions the inhabitants of the 
great cities of the empire were collected in the circus of the 
theatre, where every circumstance of the place, as well as 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 313 

of the ceremony, contributed to kindle their devotion and 
to extinguish their humanity. Whilst the numerous spec- 
tators, crowned with garlands, perfumed with incense, puri- 
fied with the blood of victims, and surrounded with the 
altars and statues of their tutelar deities, resigned them- 
selves to the enjoyment of pleasures which they considered 
as an essential part of their religious worship, they recol- 
lected that the christians alone abhorred the gods of man- 
kind, and by their absence and melancholy on these solemn 
festivals, seemed to insult or to lament the public felicity. 
If the empire had been afflicted by any recent calamity, by 
a plague, a famine, or an unsuccessful war ; if the Tiber 
had, or if the Nile had not risen beyond its banks ; if the 
earth had shaken, or if the temperate order of the seasons 
had been interrupted, the superstitious pagans were con- 
vinced that the crimes and the impiety of the christians, 
who were spared by the excessive lenity of the government, 
had at length provoked the divine justice. It was not 
among a licentious and exasperated populace that the forms 
of legal proceedings could be observed ; it was not in an 
amphitheatre, stained with the blood of wild beasts and 
gladiators, that the voice of compassion could be heard 
The impatient clamors of the multitude denounced the 
christians as the enemies of gods and men, doomed them 
to the severest tortures, and venturing to accuse by name 
some of the most distinguished of the new sectaries, re- 
quired with irresistible vehemence that they should be in- 
stantly apprehended and cast to the lions."* 



* Gibbon, vol. ii. pages 412, 413. 
14 



314 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



But the Gospel had intrinsic impediments even 
more formidable than those presented from without. 
These inherent impediments arose from its immacu- 
late purity and holiness ; its humbling doctrines and 
precepts ; its lofty and uncompromising exactions. 
It was opposed to the pride and passions of fallen 
man ; it came into collision with all the aspirations 
of the carnal heart. It beguiled not proselytes by 
specious promises ; it plainly predicted as the earthly 
portion of the primitive believers, persecution, im- 
prisonment, and martyrdom. These were the lega- 
cies — the only sublunary legacies — it bequeathed 
to its faithful followers. 

The first mandate of the Gospel was, " Repent.' 
The injunction implied the charge of natural de- 
pravity. Nor did the Gospel leave to arrogant 
man the boast that he could repent by his own un- 
aided volition. It exposed the feebleness as well as 
the turpitude of our fallen nature. At the head of 
mortal excellencies, it placed the lowly virtue of 
humility. It said to the passionate and the re- 
vengeful, " Love your enemies " Bless them that 
curse you " Whosoever shall smite thee on thy 
right cheek, turn to him the other also." To the 
aspirants after wealth, it proclaimed, " Lay not up 
for yourselves treasures upon earth." " If thou 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 315 

wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast and give 
to the poor." " It is easier for a camel to go through 
the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter 
into the kingdom of God." 

To the votaries of ambition, Christianity declared, 
" Blessed are the poor in spirit." " Whosoever shall 
exalt himself shall be abased, and he that shall hum- 
ble himself shall be exalted." Its Founder an- 
nounced to the lovers of pleasure, " If any man will 
come after me, let him deny himself and take up 
his cross daily and follow me." Upon the humble 
ranks, so apt to repine at their allotted station, it 
imposed its command, " Servants, be subject to your 
masters with all fear, not only to the good and gen- 
tle, but also to the froward." It curbed the factious 
and turbulent masses by its injunction ; " Submit 
yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's 
sake, whether it be to the king as supreme, or unto 
governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the 
punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise of them 
that do well." 

" The carnal mind is enmity against God." It 
is no less hostile to his Holy Word. The Gospel 
came into direct conflict with the natural heart of 
our whole fallen race, whether high or low, rich or 
poor, bond or free, rulers or ruled, learned or un- 



316 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



learned. If it had not been accompanied by mirac- 
ulous demonstrations of a present God, the world 
would unanimously have deemed it, what it was 
deemed by the philosophic, the profound, the else 
candid Tacitus, a "dire superstition;" and its abet- 
tors would, by universal acclamation, have been 
branded with what he termed " deserved infamy," 
"for their hatred of human kind." The scribes 
and pharisees gnashed on the Gospel with their 
teeth. The scribes and pharisees were but sam- 
ples of apostate humanity. The intellect of the 
natural man may be forced to admit the lustre of 
evangelical light, but he can no more love that 
light than the diseased eye can dwell with compla- 
cency on the effulgence of the noonday sun. Had 
it not been divine, the Gospel could no more have 
turned heavenward the grovelling affections of the 
nations, than the descending stream can climb 
again the mountain height. The onward, upward 
progress of the despised and persecuted faith, vio- 
lated the fixed laws of human nature as really as 
the reascension of the ocean-bound flood would 
violate the fixed laws of the physical universe. 

The promulgation of Christianity, miraculous in 
itself, was attended with the auxiliary miracle of a 
stupendous change in the lives of the primitive 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 317 



christians. It was affirmed by the Gospel, that its 
divine efficacy would transform its converts from 
habits of sinful indulgence to the practice of holi- 
ness. Upon the verity of this affirmation it rested 
its own truthfulness. It made the practical and 
thorough reformation of its proselytes a test, open 
and palpable, of its claim to divinity. It professed 
that reform of the outer man was its visible seal 
stamped on all its faithful followers. If for a suc- 
cession of years, no impress of this seal had been 
discernible by the world, the Gospel must have 
sunk under the weight of its own falsified preten- 
sions. "See how these christians live!" would 
have been the taunting exclamation of unbelief, 
more fatal to the progress of evangelical truth than 
the crosses, the flames, and the lions of its per- 
secutors. 

An imposture would never have encountered the 
test to which the Gospel voluntarily submitted it- 
self. Next to changing the heart, the most ardu- 
ous effort is to change the life. Some writer says 
that " man is a bundle of habits." The saying is 
true. Habits become a second nature, often more 
inflexible than the first. The difficulty of the tran- 
sition from vice to virtue, is expressed in Scripture 
with a power of language peculiar to the Sacred 



318 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

Oracles. " Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or 
the leopard his spots ? then may ye - also do good 
that are accustomed to do evil." # Yet did the 
Gospel achieve a revolution in the morals of hu- 
man kind sudden, radical, extensive, enduring. 
Moral reform closely followed the footsteps of 
Christianity whithersoever it went in its conquer- 
ing career from clime to clime. 

The time and circumstances of the moral revo- 
lution, wrought by early Christianity, were pecu- 
liarly adverse to its success. Judea was then 
divided between the self-worshipping pharisees, 
who thanked God that they were not as other men, 
and the dissolute sadducees whose language prac- 
tically was, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
we die." These two sects controlled the whole 
population of the country. How hostile to the 
pride of the one, and to the libertinism of the other, 
must have seemed the self-denying precepts and 
virtues inculcated by the Son of the carpenter and 
his plebeian followers ! 

As it entered the territories of paganism, even 
Christianity might have been appalled at the depth 
and universality of triumphant wickedness. There 



* Jeremiah xiii. 23. 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 319 



were giants of iniquity in those days. The wealth 
of conquered kingdoms, flowing for centuries into 
the Roman capital, had made it a vast reservoir of 
corruption. Its gladiatorial spectacles, where cap- 
tives were forced to engage in mortal combat, per- 
haps brother with brother, for the amusement of 
assembled multitudes, had contaminated the tastes 
and hardened the hearts of the entire community. 
There lived Apicius and his luxurious followers, 
some of whom, in the midst of starving thousands, 
had not been ashamed to pay one hundred pounds 
sterling for a single fish, and to expend fifty thou- 
sand pounds sterling in one entertainment. There 
reigned Messalina, the royal wanton, whose foul 
example of cruelty and lust polluted the general 
atmosphere. From this sea of licentiousness di- 
verged into each imperial province, copious and 
overflowing streams of spiritual poison. The Ro- 
man empire, comprising all the civilized regions of 
the earth, had, in the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, 
Claudius, and Nero, become, though eminently in- 
tellectual, one vast Sodom of iniquity, without a 
solitary Lot, save the offspring of Christianity, to 
disturb the monotony of evil. 

It was in this age of seemingly hopeless deprav- 
ity, that the poor, illiterate, and despised pilgrims 



320 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



of the cross, assumed and accomplished the mighty 
task of reforming the morals of the world. The 
scoffing nations regarded them as idiots or mad- 
men. Upon any natural principle the growth of 
the christian graces in a soil so saturated with vice, 
was a physical impossibility. Yet upon that very 
soil did the christian graces spring up and spread 
and flourish. The conclusion is inevitable, that 
they were planted and watered by the hand of God. 
The practical holiness of the primitive christians 
stood prominent among the supernatural prodigies 
authenticating the Gospel. It was a miracle, per- 
haps more affecting to the heart than the healing 
of the sick or the stilling of the tempest. 

If we contemplate the human instrumentality 
employed in the spread of Christianity, the demon- 
stration of divine interposition will become still 
more palpable. The most wonderful feature in the 
history of the primitive church is, the inadequacy 
of its terrestrial means to the achievement of its 
mighty conquests. The avowed object of the Gos- 
pel, from the first, was the moral renovation of the 
whole human family; its "good tidings of great 
joy" were " to all people ;" the parting mandate of 
its Founder enjoined that it should be preached " to 
every creature it grasped not Judea alone, but 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 321 

the "thick rotundity of the world." Its mortal 
agents for the accomplishment of its stupendous 
purpose, were a little band of Jewish peasants ; of a 
despised nation the most despised members ; " made 
as the filth of the earth/' " the offscouring of all 
things without money, without learning, with- 
out friends, without arms ; scarcely understanding 
the rudiments of their mother tongue, -yet familiarly 
addressing every people in its own strange lan- 
guage. 

The votaries of ambition have often sought the 
conquest of the world. But their march in quest 
of universal domination had in its train 

" The neighing steed and the shrill trump, 
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear--piercing fife, 
The royal banner, and all quality, 
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war." 

Contrast the martial array of Alexander or of 
Napoleon with the peaceful and humble band that 
followed the carpenter's Son. Yet had the " meek 
and lowly" Nazarene impediments to surmount in- 
comparably greater than those opposed to the 
Macedonian or to the Corsican. Slight was the 
effeminate resistance of oriental slaves, compared 



* 1 Corinthians iv. 13. 



322 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



with the fierce hostility of imperial Rome. Spring 
would dissolve the Russian frost ; it required the 
blood of God to thaw into repentance the else in- 
terminable winter of the carnal heart. The empire 
of Philip's son survived not its founder ; his modern 
imitator lived himself to behold the bursting of the 
colossal bubble for which he had madly sacrificed 
the lives perhaps of millions. The dominion of the 
Prince of peace — wide as the world — has already 
survived, even before attaining its glorious matu- 
rity, the lapse of eighteen hundred years. From 
its lofty eminence it has serenely viewed the 
changes of dynasties, itself unchanged ; the muta- 
tions of time, itself immutable. 

Viewed as a device of earth, the original evan- 
gelical enterprise was a compound of idiocy and 
madness. Viewed as a divine dispensation, it is in 
strict accordance with other gracious displays of 
infinite wisdom. The Almighty has been wont to 
accomplish his stupendous purposes by means seem- 
ingly disproportioned to their ends. It is not al- 
ways in the strong wind, or the earthquake, or the 
fire, but oftener, perhaps, in the " still small voice/' 
that the Omnipotent is heard. It need not excite 
our special wonder, that the Word made flesh 
should have poured " contempt upon princes," by 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 323 

selecting as the honored instruments for dissemi- 
nating his great salvation, the poor, the illiterate, 
the despised. "I thank thee, O Father," he .ex- 
claimed, " Lord of heaven and earth, because thou 
hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, 
*» and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, 
Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight."* 



* Matthew xi. 25, 26. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 

Character of Gibbon as an historian — Would have discovered any 
defect in foundations of Christianity — Bound to give some cause 
of prodigious spread of Gospel — Denying divine agency, he 
assigned five causes merely human — His five causes stated 
— First cause — Zeal of primitive christians — Was met by coun- 
ter zeal of Jews and heathens — Second cause — Doctrine of 
future life — Hell revealed by Gospel appalling and repulsive — 
Even its heaven not suited to tastes of depraved heart — Third 
cause — Miraculous powers ascribed to primitive church — Arroga- 
tion of such powers without their possession, a fraud easily de- 
tected — Fourth cause — Pure morals of early christians — Their 
pure morals proof of efficacy and truth of Gospel — Gibbon's at- 
tempt to explain their pure morals — Fifth cause — Union and dis- 
cipline of christian republic — No federative union of churches 
until close of second century — And before then Gospel had 
achieved signal triumphs — No event in history parallel to prim- 
itive spread of Christianity — Imposture of Mohammed — Mod- 
ern missions. 

Had his candor equalled his capacity, Edward 
Gibbon would have stood almost at the head of un- 
inspired historians. His imagination was powerful, 
his intellect comprehensive, his memory retentive, 
his industry untiring. His " History of the Decline 
and Fall of the Roman Empire," occupied twenty 
years of the meridian of his life. It is, perhaps, the 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 325 

most erudite of historical compositions. Its author 
was master alike of the treasures of secular and of 
ecclesiastical learning. His great work' reached 
back to the birth of our Saviour, and downward 
almost to the era of the Reformation. Christianity 
met him at . every stage of his progress along the 
track of time. No writer, lay or clerical, ever pos- 
sessed a more thorough knowledge than he did of 
all the circumstances attending the rise and spread 
of our holy religion. He was moved to a search- 
ing exploration of its primitive annals by a motive 
not common to literary men. Though wearing the 
mask of friendship to the Gospel, he hated it with 
the most perfect hatred. He could "smile and 
murder while" he smiled. How little did it become 
the dignity of the historian and the philosopher, to 
substitute for the sword of the honorable combatant 
the stiletto of the muffled assassin ! 

Had there been any defect in the foundations of 
the christian superstructure ; had not Jesus Christ 
been a real personage, crucified at Jerusalem in the 
reign of Tiberius by the sentence of Pontius Pilate ; 
had not the books composing the New Testament 
been actually published at the time they purport to 
have been published — the inquisitive and vindictive 
infidel would have detected and exposed the impos- 



326 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



ture to the contempt and execration of mankind. 
If anything impugning the scriptural narratives 
could have been gleaned from cotemporaneous his- 
tory, or from any Jewish or heathen writings what- 
soever, his never-sleeping rancor would have dis- 
covered and proclaimed it to the four winds of 
heaven. 

Gibbon assumed to be the historian of advancing 
Christianity as well as of the declining empire. 
The wonderful phenomenon of the Gospel's spread 
was the great event of the epoch of which he wrote. 
As an historian and philosopher, he could not 
shrink from the attempt to explain its cause or 
causes. An effect without a cause would be an 
anomaly in nature. The Gospel affirmed that its 
rapid diffusion was wrought by the direct agency 
of the Holy Ghost. Denying supernatural in- 
fluence, the daring skeptic assigned for the stupen- 
dous effect, which for centuries had filled the world 
with amazement, five causes merely human. He 
took issue with the great Author of the Bible. For 
the conflict he invoked all the energies of his proud 
intellect, and all the resources of his unsurpassed 
erudition. The natural causes which he assigned 
were, doubtless, the most specious that malign in- 
genuity could invent. To his assignment infidelity 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 327 

has never attempted any amendment ; she claims 
no subterfuges in reserve ; her renowned cham- 
pion has put forth all her strength ; upon his issue 
she must stand or fall. If his five causes are all 
found utterly wanting when weighed in the bal- 
ance, the world must look to the cause assigned by 
the Gospel's God. For if the promulgation of the 
Gospel could not have been wrought by human 
means, it must have been achieved by divine. 

The following are the five causes of the Gospel's 
early and rapid spread assigned by the historian of 
declining Rome. They are given in his own 
words : 

" I. The innexibile, and, if we may use the expression, 
the intolerant zeal of the christians, derived, it is true, from 
the Jewish religion, but purified from the narrow and un- 
social spirit, which, instead of inviting, had deterred the 
gentiles from embracing the law of Moses. II. The doc- 
trine of a future life, improved by every additional circum- 
stance which could give weight and efficacy to that impor- 
tant truth. III. The miraculous powers ascribed to the 
primitive church. IV. The pure and austere morals of the 
christians. V. The union and discipline of the christian 
republic, which gradually formed an independent and in- 
creasing state in the heart of the Roman empire." * 



* Gibbon, vol. ii. p. 264. 



328 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

To the causes of Christianity's early progress the 
historian has devoted two labored chapters, amount- 
ing together to two hundred and twenty-five octavo 
pages. His five causes we shall examine in their 
order. 

First. — The first of the causes assigned for the 
Gospel's spread, is the inflexible zeal of the primi- 
tive christians. But had they no countervailing 
zeal to combat ? In speaking of Jewish intolerance, 
Gibbon himself says, " The current of zeal and de- 
votion, as it was contracted into a narrow channel, 
ran with the strength, and sometimes with the fury 
of a torrent."* And this rushing flood was con- 
centrated upon the Founder of Christianity and his 
primeval followers. Scarcely less fierce was the 
ardor of the polytheists in sustaining their ancient 
superstition against the innovating and exclusive 
faith of the cross. Had the devotion of the chris- 
tians consisted in impetuous zeal alone, its force 
would have been met and neutralized by the oppo- 
sing fury of the Jews and gentiles. Zeal, to effect 
general and permanent conviction, requires sus- 
taining proofs of the system it espouses; else it 



* Gibbon, vol. ii. p. 266. 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 329 

quickly degenerates into insane and powerless fanat- 
icism. Religious phrenzy may pervade a single 
neighborhood; but how could it subdue opposing 
continents ? It may endure for a brief generation ; 
but how could it survive the flight of successive 
centuries ? 

Secondly. — The second of the infidel causes 
assigned for the early diffusion of Christianity is its 
more complete development of a future state. It is 
true that the Founder of our religion "brought life 
and immortality to light through the Gospel. 5 ' But 
if the Gospel revealed its heaven, it revealed, also, 
its hell. The evangelical representations of human 
depravity, and its fearful retributions beyond the 
grave, were calculated to repulse rather than to 
conciliate the carnal heart. Tacitus and Pliny did 
but. body forth the spontaneous whisperings of cor- 
rupt humanity, when the former styled Christianity 
a "dire superstition," and the latter spoke of its 
" contagion" as he would have spoken of pestilential 
poison. 

Nor had even the christian heaven allurements 
for the carnal spirit. The heart must be changed 
before it can dwell with complacency on the pure 
raptures of the immediate mansion of the Most 



330 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



High. An immortality of holiness might rather 
have repelled than attracted the polytheist. Hea- 
then voluptuousness would have inclined to its own 
elysium, rather than to the everlasting companion- 
ship of the cherubim and seraphim. Had the angels 
conveyed to Abraham's bosom Dives instead of 
Lazarus, the spurner of the pious beggar might have 
found the consuming presence of a holy God not 
less intolerable than the torments which extorted 
from him the piercing cry for a drop of water to 
cool his burning tongue. The wily Arabian impos- 
tor, when he devised his sensual paradise, under- 
stood the tastes of the natural heart better than did 
the profound historian of the " Decline and Fall of 
the Roman Empire." 

Thirdly. — " The miraculous powers ascribed to 
the primitive church," is the third cause assigned 
by Gibbon, for the diffusion of Christianity. When 
the unbeliever spoke of the ascription of supernat- 
ural powers to the church, he did not mean to inti- 
mate that the church actually possessed them. On 
the contrary, he ever sought with untiring assiduity 
the impeachment of the christian miracles ; less, 
indeed, by open denial than by disingenuous inu- 
endo. It was the false arrogation of miraculous 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 331 

powers by the infant church, that he meant to in- 
sinuate as the third cause of the Gospel's early pro- 
mulgation. He indirectly intimated, what he 
scarcely ventured to affirm directly, that the early 
heralds of the cross fraudulently beguiled their 
proselytes by the instrumentality of counterfeited 
signs and wonders. 

We have, in preceding chapters, endeavored to 
show that the nature, circumstances, diffusion, and 
long continuance of the christian miracles precluded 
the possibility of their being deceptive ; that the im- 
mediate attendants upon our Lord must necessarily 
have ascertained from the evidence of their own 
senses whether he healed the sick, raised the dead, 
and cast out devils by his simple mandate ; that the 
Gospel claimed to be accompanied, long after the 
decease of its Founder, with signs and wonders, as 
its authenticating and sure credentials ; that it 
made their genuineness the test of its own truth ; 
that the dispersed nations, to whom it appealed, and 
whose fealty it challenged, would have examined its 
credentials with the most inquisitorial scrutiny be- 
fore yielding allegiance to a new, contemned, and 
persecuted faith, which promised nothing on earth 
to its followers but privations, sufferings, and deaths 
of torture ; that the enemies of Christianity stood 



332 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

vigilant sentinels over its alleged prodigies, ever 
ready and eager to expose to universal execration 
the least semblance of imposture ; and that those 
very enemies, instead of denying the fact of the 
christian marvels, admitted their existence and pre- 
ternatural character by ascribing them to demoniac 
or magical agency. These topics' we need not 
again commend to the profound consideration of 
the inquirer after truth. 

The demonstration that the evangelical signs 
and wonders were not simulated, but real, will be- 
come more resistless if we consider the age and 
countries in which they were originally displayed 
to the senses of mankind. It was the Augustan 
age — memorable, as we have seen, for its licen- 
tiousness, yet doubtless the most intellectual, the 
most erudite, the most investigating, the most skep- 
tical epoch of all antiquity. The infant Gospel 
confined not itself to the skirts of civilization. The 
chief cities of Western Asia, with Jerusalem and 
Antioch at their head, were scenes of its triumphs. 
It waved its banner over classic Greece. At the 
Athenian Areopagus, it confronted the Epicureans 
and the Stoics in the very citadel of their strength. 
It appeared before deputies, governors, and kings. 
It touched the heart of Sergius Paulus, made Felix 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 333 



tremble, and almost persuaded Agrippa to be a 
christian. It appealed to Caesar, and boldly chal- 
lenged the scrutiny of the proud capital of all the 
earth. 

Should a band of obscure adventurers in modern 
times, conspire to revolutionize the spiritual world 
by substituting for the existing theology of Chris- 
tendom a new and hostile faith, which denounced 
the Jehovah of the Bible as an imaginary being, 
and his temples as the receptacles of unmeaning 
idolatry ; and should they, in furtherance of their 
impious enterprise, claim to be endowed with the 
gift of unknown tongues, and the power of working 
miracles akin to those wrought by Jesus Christ and 
his early apostles — what kingdoms, what states, 
what provinces, what cities, what villages could 
they beguile by their insane imposture ? It might 
possibly, for some brief space, and in some obscure 
corner, decoy by the tricks of jugglery a few of 
the illiterate and the credulous. But how could it 
induce the enlightened and the wise of different 
countries to believe that, in their presence and in 
the light of day, it had by its word, cured all man- 
ner of diseases, raised the dead to life, calmed the 
turbulent winds, and smoothed the waves of the 
angry flood ? How could such an imposture tri- 



334 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

umphantly sustain the searching inquisition of time ? 
How could it so far confound the gainsaying as to 
compel them to yield credence to the fact of its 
mighty works, and seek for them a cause in the 
agency of the powers of darkness ? 

And yet infidelity, in denying the inspiration of 
the Gospel, has no alternative but to hold that, in 
the most polished age of classic antiquity, an im- 
posture no less startling than the one just supposed, 
was, by the instrumentality of fishermen, publicans, 
and tent-makers, spread through enlightened conti- 
nents, and finally seated on the throne of the civil- 
ized world, in opposition to the corrupt passions of 
the carnal heart, the fierce prejudices of ancient 
superstitions, and the dungeon, the wheel, the stake, 
the cross, and the wild beasts of despotic power. 
Great must be the faith of the infidel ! He believes 
what none but he would have the hardihood to be- 
lieve. His alone is the morbid credulity that he 
would slanderously impute to the primitive chris- 
tians. Infidelity requires for its aliment a faith 
competent to "remove" "and cast into the sea," 
mountains of improbability piled on mountains. 

Fourthly. — " The pure and austere morals of the 
christians," is the fourth cause named by the un- 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 335 

believing historian for the early and wide diffusion 
of Christianity. That the primitive converts were 
distinguished by unexampled purity of life, was af- 
firmed by every christian writer of antiquity, and 
disputed by no cotemporaneous author, Jewish or 
heathen. Thus established by universal and con- 
stant asseveration on the one part, and by the total 
absence of denial on the other, the spotless virtue 
of christian professors in the first age of the church 
has become an historic truism, to which even skep- 
ticism is forced to yield unwilling credence. Had 
the learned industry of Gibbon been able to cast 
over the fact the twilight of peradventure, he would 
not have assigned it as one of the five causes of the 
mightiest revolution the world has ever beheld. 

But the sneering infidel seems to have regarded 
the purity of the infant church with little more 
complacency than did the father of evil the inno- 
cency of Eden. Compelled to admit the great out- 
ward change in the lives of the primitive faithful, 
he directed his wily efforts to neutralize the just in- 
ference resulting from that change. He insidiously 
adopts, though he affects to reprobate, what he 
terms the " very ancient reproach," " that the chris- 
tians allured into their party the most atrocious 
criminals, who, as soon as they were touched by a 



336 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

sense of remorse, were easily persuaded to wash 
away in the water of baptism the guilt of their past 
conduct, for which the temples of the gods refused 
to grant them any expiation."* And in the next 
page he adds ; " After the example of their divine 
master, the missionaries of the gospel disdained 
not the society of men, and especially of women, 
oppressed by the consciousness, and very often by 
the effects of their vices. As they emerged from 
sin and superstition to the glorious hope of immor- 
tality, they resolved to devote themselves to a life 
not only of virtue, but of penitence. The desire 
of perfection became the ruling passion of their 
soul ; and it is well known that, while reason em- 
braces a cold mediocrity, our passions hurry us 
with rapid violence over the space which lies be- 
tween the most opposite extremes." As an auxil- 
iary motive to reformation, the historian suggests 
the clanship of the early believers, which prompted 
them to the most rigid strictness of life for the 
credit of their sect.f 

Thus, according to the theory of Gibbon, the 
confessed purity of the primitive christians was 
owing, primarily, to the natural workings of atro- 



* Gibbon, vol. ii. p. 811. 



f Ibid. 312, 313. 



THE PROMULGATION* OF THE GOSPEL. 337 

cious but relenting guilt, which, casting forth its 
victims from its own dark recesses, hurried them 
with a sort of volcanic impulse to the contrary ex- 
cess of engrossing sanctity ; and, secondarily, to 
the desire of the new converts to acquire reputa- 
tion for the society of which they had become the 
members. 

The accusation, professedly disapproved, yet 
sneeringly indorsed by Gibbon, " that the christians 
allured into their party the most atrocious crimi- 
nals," and which he proffers in solution of the ad- 
mitted virtue of the early converts, deserves more 
than a passing notice. It has some shades of 
truth, mixed with many shades of disingenuous 
falsity. It is true that Christianity often displayed 
the infinitude of its mercy by descending to the 
ranks of the most profligate offenders. Our blessed 
Lord once touched with saving penitence the heart 
of the expiring thief; he once cast out seven devils 
from the woman who had been a notorious offender. 
But it was not the dissolute alone " that the chris- 
tians allured into their party." Neither Saul of 
Tarsus, nor Cornelius, nor Sergius Paulus, nor 
Dionysius the Areopagite, nor the converts of the 
household of Caesar, were "atrocious criminals." 

The faith of the cross freely proffered its great sal- 
15 



338 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



vation, without distinction or exception, to the 
whole fallen race. 

Had the Gospel, with its profession of reforming 
all its proselytes, been an impious forgery, its crafty 
fabricators would not have voluntarily essayed the 
stony hearts of confirmed criminals, lest by failure 
they should directly falsify its profession. Refor- 
mation of profligate habits, fixed by time, is almost as 
difficult as the restoration of vitality to the dead. 
Adroit fabricators of a wicked deception, arroga- 
ting to itself the character of truth, would never 
have hazarded the success of their enterprise on 
the perilous experiment of reclaiming veterans in 
iniquity. How feeble the prospect of even tempo- 
rary reform! How imminent the jeopardy of 
speedy, irrecoverable relapse, involving in ruinous 
discredit the rash pretenders to extraordinary 
powers ! 

The Gospel claimed to possess, in its regenera- 
ting and sanctifying influences, an infallible remedy 
for healing the leprosy of moral evil. If the Gospel 
was a fabrication, its sagacious contrivers knew 
that their vaunted remedy was but a deceptive nos- 
trum, and that "its failure on public trial would be 
likely to overwhelm them in hopeless confusion. 
They would, therefore, have been most wary in the 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 339 



choice of subjects for the decisive experiment. If 
they selected subjects of blameless lives, the failure 
of their nostrum might perchance be the less pal- 
pable and conclusive. Why then should they peril 
their enterprise and their character on the forlorn 
hope of reclaiming hardened iniquity ? Why should 
they strive to change the Ethiopian's skin, or the 
leopard's spots ? Medical empiricism, arrogating 
infallibility, would avoid cases of hopeless ailment. 
Moral empiricism claiming a sovereign specific for 
universal reform, would, in like manner, eschew 
cases of gross and reckless licentiousness, where 
amendment could not be achieved without impugn- 
ing the settled principles of apostate humanity. 
The very fact, then, that the early christian mis- 
sionaries so often and so fearlessly grappled with 
" the most atrocious criminals," as fit subjects for 
what they proclaimed the infallibly reclaiming med- 
icine of the Gospel, is proof of their own full assu- 
rance that the medicine was of divine efficacy. 

Motives founded in the pride of clanship could 
not have materially contributed, as Gibbon would 
insinuate, to the matchless virtues of the primeval 
believers. They must have commenced their 
moral career before they could have gained admis- 
sion to the evangelical brotherhood. Their refor- 



340 



THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



mation preceded their admission, instead of being its 
effect. And when in the history of our race has 
the pride of clanship voluntarily endured a life of 
privation, penury and suffering; the spoiling of 
goods ; the poisoned darts of calumny ; the rending 
of the warm ties that bind the heart to kindred, and 
to the loved companions of early youth ? When 
has it inspired its possessors with the high resolve 
of joyously submitting to be sawn asunder with 
saws ; torn limb from limb by wild horses ; con- 
sumed by slow fires ; rent in pieces by ravenous 
beasts ; nailed to the protracted death agonies 
of the cross ? When has such zeal for party, 
so insanely chivalrous, so recklessly self-abandon- 
ing, ever overspread a hemisphere, and descended 
through successive generations ? 

Thus abortive were the efforts of the learned and 
eloquent unbeliever to detect any mixture of alloy 
in the pure gold of primeval christian sanctity. 
The holiness embodied in the lives of the primitive 
faithful, must have been an emanation faint indeed, 
yet genuine, of the Holiness that dwells " between 
the cherubims." Where, in the multitudinous an- 
nals of polytheism can be found traces of any great 
moral reform pervading the masses of society, and 
reaching from country to country, from clime to 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 341 



clime, and from generation to generation ? What 
has infidelity at any time done to meliorate the 
hearts or the habits of human kind ? How has it 
come to pass that the only resurrection of the na- 
tions from the grave of sin to a life of virtue, ever 
witnessed in the flight of time, was achieved by the 
benignant influences, the serene potency of the Gos- 
pel ? The stupendous change wrought by Christi- 
anity in the morals of apostate humanity is instinct 
with demonstration of its celestial origin. 

The medicine of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for 
restoring to virtue our fallen race was not com- 
pounded in the laboratories of earth. Its vital ele- 
ment is the blood of the Son of God. It has from 
the beginning healed all who were willing to be 
made whole. Nor has hardened guilt been able to 
elude or to resist it. It has reclaimed the sottishly 
intemperate, assuaged to lamb-like gentleness the 
fury of the homicide, restored to the practice of the 
chaste virtues the inmate of the brothel. During 
the miraculous age it wrought astounding prodigies 
in the reformation of vast kingdoms and continents. 
The lofty and pure morality of the primitive chris- 
tians is a phenomenon at which infidelity has gazed 
and wondered for eighteen centuries. Nor did the 
great reforming medicine of the Gospel lose its ef- 



342 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 



ficacy with the termination of the miraculous 
epoch. Though less magnificent in its displays, it 
has, even to the present day, unceasingly spread its 
purifying and healing influences, like the gentle 
dews of heaven, upon every province, village, pal- 
ace, and cottage of Christendom, 

Fifthly. — The fifth cause assigned by Gibbon for 
the spread of the Gospel, is " the union and disci- 
pline of the christian republic, which," says he, 
" gradually formed an independent state in the heart 
of the Roman empire." But, upon his own show- 
ing, no federative union of the christian churches 
existed, until near the close of the second century ; 
and previous to that time the faith of the cross had 
achieved its most wonderful triumphs. During the 
apostolic age each congregation of believers was 
distinct and independent, connected with its sister 
churches only by the general ties of a common faith. 
Its officers were a bishop, presbyters, and deacons. 
Equality and independence formed the basis of its 
organization. Even its bishop was constantly re- 
minded by the humbleness of his duties, that he was 
one of the successors of Him who had washed his 
disciples feet. Gibbon himself alleges that "such 
was the mild and equal constitution by which the 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 343 

christians were governed more than a hundred 
years after the death of the apostles."* 

And this was the palmy state of Christianity. 
Justin Martyr, who wrote about the year one hun- 
dred and forty, affirmed, as we have already seen, 
that it had then spread into every country of the 
known world, whether civilized or barbarous. To 
impute the primeval success of Christianity to the 
federative union of the churches, which did not 
exist until near sixty years after Justin Martyr 
wrote, is to make the alleged effect precede its 
assigned cause — an absurdity in reasoning not 
without parallels in infidel logic. The discipline 
of the churches had for its object the orthodoxy 
and purity of their own respective members. Its 
influence was but indirect and reflective in spread- 
ing the Gospel among the nations. 

Towards the close of the second century, and 
after Christianity had made gigantic strides in the 
spiritual conquest of the world, provincial synods 
were instituted. They originated in Greece and 
Asia Minor, and seem to have been suggested by 
the example of the Amphyctions, the Achaean 
league, and the assemblies of the Ionian cities. 



* Gibbon, voL ii. p. 328. 



344 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

They soon extended throughout the empire; and 
it became the general custom for the bishops to 
meet for consultation in the capitals of their respec- 
tive provinces, during the seasons of spring and 
autumn. A correspondence was established be- 
tween the local synods, and the proceedings of 
each were regularly communicated to all. But the 
federative churches had no funds, except such as 
had been contributed for domestic charities; no 
missionaries were in their pay ; no temporal force 
was at their beck ; the strong arm of civil power 
was constantly uplifted against them. It is to be 
borne in mind, that no general council was held 
until after Christianity had ascended the imperial 
throne. The first general council of Christendom 
was that of Nice, convened by Constantine the 
Great, in the year three hundred and twenty-five. 
The chief human instrument in the hands of the 
Holy Ghost for the primitive diffusion of Christi- 
anity, was the lonely pilgrim, who, like the Saint 
of Tarsus, traversed mountains and deserts, king- 
doms and continents, in the midst of privations, 
scoffings, and perils, working with his own hands, 
lest he should be chargeable to the churches. 

Thus it appears that the learned, eloquent, and 
profound historian of " The Decline and Fall of the 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 345 

Roman Empire/' has totally failed in his colossal 
effort to discover causes merely human for the 
phenomenon of the Gospel's promulgation. His 
failure was no less signal than that of the essay of the 
giants to scale the heavens. Should all its other 
miracles be blotted from the Sacred Record, that 
of its early, rapid, and extensive spread against 
such fearful obstacles, extraneous and inherent, 
without earthly means to impel it onward, would 
remain a monument of its celestial lineage, im- 
movable and commanding as the everlasting 
mountains. The sudden dispersion of the thick 
darkness of the nations before the morning rays of 
the moral Sun, was no less demonstrative of al- 
mighty agency than was the first coming forth of 

" The powerful king of day- 
Rejoicing in the east." 

The history of the world contains no event bear- 
ing similitude to the original spread of the Gospel. 
Mohammed disavowed the power of working signs 
and wonders, and thus sagaciously avoided the 
quicksands in which Christianity must inevitably 
have perished, had its claim to miracles been false. 
As a mere teacher, he signally failed. With every 
advantage of birth, connections, talents, education, 
15* 



346 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

and address, the arts of persuasion gained him in 
the first three years of his enterprise, only fourteen 
converts. During the next ten years the progress 
of his mission continued to be hesitating and slow. 
About the close of that period, political intrigue ob- 
tained for him the sovereignty of the neighboring 
city of Medina. This acquisition transformed the 
obsequious instructor into the military chieftain. 
In the subsequent revelations, of which he pre- 
tended to be the recipient, the prophet of Medina 
ventured upon a fiercer and more sanguinary tone 
than had been assumed by the preacher of Mecca. 

His now bolder creed was calculated to arouse 
all the energies of martial frenzy. In addition to 
the four wives allowed to the ordinary believer, it 
surrendered to the soldier of the crescent the fe- 
male captives achieved by his prowess. It prom- 
ised the most voluptuous delights of its sensual 
heaven to the intrepid champion of the faith. 
"The sword," says Mohammed, "is the key of 
heaven and of hell; a drop of blood shed in the 
cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of more 
avail than two months' fasting or prayer ; whoso- 
ever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven ; at the day 
of judgment, his wounds shall be resplendent as 
vermilion and odoriferous as musk; and the loss 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 347 

of his limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels 
and cherubim."* To him were to be allotted, as 
long as eternity shall last, seventy-two houris or 
nymphs of paradise, of celestial beauty, virgin pu- 
rity, and unfading youth. The impostor of Arabia 
well knew the avenues to the freebooter's heart. 
" Fight, fight ! Paradise, paradise !" ".I see, beck- 
oning me upwards, the black-eyed maidens,"f were 
the frantic war-cries that sounded and reverberated 
along the ranks of the Saracen hosts. 

Such a creed placed at the beck of the Arabian 
adventurer thronging bands of lawless desperadoes. 
His faith was disseminated, not by the power of 
conviction, but by the force of arms. Religion 
was only his pretence ; his ambition was martial 
conquest. Novelty and oneness of theological be- 
lief he deemed the best auxiliaries and cements of 
his domination. To the Jews and christians he 
proffered the Koran, the tribute, or the sword ; on 
the pagans, he imposed the summary alternative of 
conversion or death. The triumph of his impos- 
ture was but a military achievement. As such it 
was no more marvellous than the barbarian con- 
quests of Zingis Khan or Tamerlane. Its epoch 



* Gibbon, vol. ix. p. 297. 



f Ibid. pp. 385, 407. 



348 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

was peculiarly favorable to its success. Even 
Gibbon affirms that, " The birth of Mohammed was 
fortunately placed in the most degenerate and dis- 
orderly period of the Persians, the Romans, and 
the barbarians of Europe ; the empires of Trajan, 
or even of Constantine or Charlemagne, would 
have repelled the assault of the naked Saracens, 
and the torrent of fanaticism might have been ob- 
scurely lost in the sands of Arabia."* 

If we compare the triumphs of the primitive her- 
alds of the Gospel with the limited success of the 
christian missionaries, who labored for the conver- 
sion of heathen nations during the ten centuries 
preceding the present, the conclusion will be yet 
more irresistibly confirmed, that the former must 
have been aided " with signs and wonders, and with 
divers miracles," and special "gifts of the Holy 
Ghost." In no period of the history of the chris- 
tian church, has the evangelizing spirit, been wholly 
inert. Even the wild crusades of the dark ages 
had for their avowed object the extension of Chris- 
tianity. Papal Rome has ever cherished the favor- 
ite project of extending her spiritual dominion into 
pagan countries. Francis Xavier, in the sixteenth 



* Gibbon, vol. ix. p. 361. 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 349 



century, sowed the seeds of salvation in the island 
of Japan, revived for a time the drooping converts 
of India, and sailed for China with the sublime hope 
of transforming into a province of Christendom that 
mighty empire. He died a martyr to his indefati- 
gable zeal, within sight of the Chinese coast. Since 
the Reformation, protestantism has rivalled, per- 
haps surpassed, her elder sister in efforts to dissem- 
inate ; 'to all people" the "good tidings of great 

joy" 

In temporal advantages, the modern missionaries 
immeasurably surpassed the ancient. The mod- 
erns went forth, since the termination of the dark 
ages, from civilized nations whom the heathen re- 
garded as a sort of superior beings ; they were edu- 
cated men, familiar by previous study with the lan- 
guages in which they taught ; christian charity 
left them not utterly destitute of pecuniary means ; 
the art of printing and the mariner's compass af- 
forded them important facilities; commerce was 
their willing handmaiden ; and seldom did they fail 
in zeal, in purity of life, in strenuousness of honest 
effort. 

But between the limited success of the mission- 
aries of the Gospel, in the ten centuries preceding 
the nineteenth, and the stupendous triumphs of its 



350 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

primitive heralds, how striking was the contrast! 
The achievements of the modern missionaries, 
though often brilliant, were always ephemeral. 
Even the hopeful fruits of Xavier's pious toils 
were, soon after his decease, swept away by the 
returning flood of polytheism, as the closing waves 
of ocean obliterate the track of the passing ship. 
Paul may plant, and Apollos water ; it is God alone 
who gives the increase. 

Paley expatiates upon the contrast between the 
triumphs of the original apostles, and the compara- 
tive failure of their spiritual successors ; and thence 
deduces the irresistible conclusion that the ancients 
were endowed with miraculous gifts not vouch- 
safed to the moderns. Bishop Wilson, of Calcutta, 
resident for years in the centre of oriental missions, 
remarks : " A greater number of Jews certainly 
were converted under the first discourse of Saint 
Peter, at the day of pentecost, than have been 
gained during the eighteen hundred years which 
have elapsed since. And as to the heathen, proba- 
bly one year of the apostolic labors amongst the 
gentiles equalled in point of success,* not merely the 
thirty or forty years of the united exertions of the 
christian church with all its external advantages of 
superior civilization, influence, authority, and learn- 



THE PROMULGATION OF THE GOSPEL. 351 

ing in our own day, but the thousand years which 
preceded them."* The American bishop, Mcll- 
vaine, pronounces his conviction, that " Paul was 
instrumental in converting more heathens in thirty 
years than all modern missionaries in the last five 
hundred/' f 

But within the last quarter of a century, new 
energies have been imparted to the evangelizing 
spirit. An era has burst forth seemingly unparal- 
leled save by the apostolic. The communicants of 
christian churches gathered from heathenism in the 
eastern and western continents, and in the isles of 
the remotest seas, and now hailed as living trophies 
of redeeming grace, have swollen to a mighty host. 
If these conversions to Christianity are genuine, 
they afford cheering hopes that the God of pente- 
cost is now striving with the nations. Perhaps his 
own " set time" to favor Zion may not be remote. 
We would not irreverently speculate upon "the 
times or the seasons." J " One day is with the Lord 
as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one 
day." But we have full assurance that the future 
reign of the Messiah on earth is just as certain as 



* Wilson's Evidences of Christianity, vol. i. p. 226. 

f McLvaine's Evidences of Christianity, p. 280. % Acts l - *7« 



352 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. 

his present reign in heaven : — " For the mouth of 
the Lord hath spoken it." And when we contem- 
plate the spiritual dearth of the preceding centuries, 
and compare it with the prospects opened by the 
last twenty-five years, we will accuse none of in- 
sane enthusiasm if they regard the streaks of dawn- 
ing light in the moral heavens as harbingers of that 
long and glorious day when the beams of the Sun 
of righteousness shall fill the whole habitable world 
" as the waters cover the sea." 

" Come then, and added to thy many crowns, 
Receive yet one, the crown of all the earth, 
Thou who alone art worthy ! It was thine 
By ancient covenant, ere nature's birth ; 
And thou hast made it thine by purchase since, 
And overpaid its value with thy blood."* 



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